Children whose parents divorce tend to have worse educational outcomes than children whose parents stay married. However, not all children respond identically to their parents divorcing. We focus on how the impact of parental divorce on children’s education varies by how likely or unlikely divorce was for those parents. We find a significant negative effect of parental divorce on educational attainment, particularly college attendance and completion, among children whose parents were unlikely to divorce. Families expecting marital stability, unprepared for disruption, may experience considerable adjustment difficulties when divorce occurs, leading to negative outcomes for children. By contrast, we find no effect of parental divorce among children whose parents were likely to divorce. Children of high-risk marriages, who face many social disadvantages over childhood irrespective of parental marital status, may anticipate or otherwise accommodate to the dissolution of their parents’ marriage. Our results suggest that family disruption does not uniformly disrupt children’s attainment.

Mechanisms explaining the negative effects of parental divorce on children’s attainment have long been conjectured and assessed. Yet few studies of parental divorce have carefully attended to the assumptions and methods necessary to estimate causal mediation effects. Applying a causal framework to linked U.S. panel data, we assess the degree to which parental divorce limits children’s education among whites and nonwhites and whether observed lower levels of educational attainment are explained by postdivorce family conditions and children’s skills. Our analyses yield three key findings. First, the negative effect of divorce on educational attainment, particularly college, is substantial for white children; by contrast, divorce does not lower the educational attainment of nonwhite children. Second, declines in family income explain as much as one- to two-thirds of the negative effect of parental divorce on white children’s education. Family instability also helps explain the effect, particularly when divorce occurs in early childhood. Children’s psychosocial skills explain about one-fifth of the effect, whereas children’s cognitive skills play a minimal role. Third, among nonwhites, the minimal total effect on education is explained by the offsetting influence of postdivorce declines in family income and stability alongside increases in children’s psychosocial and cognitive skills.

Despite the strategic investment of the Perkins IV legislation to promote a broader application of career and technical education (CTE) to all students, it is unclear whether these initiatives distinctively support the needs of students with disabilities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields of study. This is a critical lapse in the research, as knowing the efficacy of CTE experiences in promoting the STEM pipeline will be important for policy makers as they consider new or revised educational policies to support the pursuit and persistence of students with disabilities into STEM fields. This study evaluates whether two CTE experiences (applied STEM course taking and school-based experiential programs) in high school differentially predict the declaration of STEM college majors for students with and without disabilities. Assessing nationally representative data, the analyses suggest that CTE experiences consisting of applied STEM courses and school-based experiential programs may both be sufficient to move through the STEM pipeline for students in the general population, but both are insufficient for supporting students with disabilities.

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