First-generation, working-class college students are on the path to upward mobility and may have social and psychological problems related to cultural differences between the working class and the middle class. In her study, Hurst (2007, 2010) reports that students of working-class origin often choose loyalty to one class. However, I revise Hurst’s model after finding that, while upwardly mobile students identify more with either the working class or middle class, they can do so without rejecting the other. The findings also indicate that colleges can encourage a healthy class transition by providing support with student organizations, role models, and coursework.

As more state legislatures join the debate on school-choice and parent-trigger legislation, their discussions draw attention to an evolving landscape outside school walls where parental action shapes educational opportunity. Parents wield their political, social, economic, and cultural capital to secure the best educational outcomes for their children. This paper identifies the political frames that distinguish the educational opportunity-seeking behavior of middle-, working-, and lower-class parents. Rational choice and interest group theories are used to explain the politics of middle-class opportunity hoarding by way of tracking and school-choice practices. Policy entrepreneurship and interest group theory provide the frameworks to explain the support for vouchers and parent-trigger laws by lower-and working-class parents as part of their opportunity-prying efforts.

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Although affirmative action in college admissions has not been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the consideration of race in admissions has been banned in nine states—in six of them by public vote. This article analyzes the campaigns to ban affirmative action in California and Michigan as a battle between interest groups. The course of events in these states demonstrates that public opinion is a threat to the legality of affirmative action, should interest groups continue to take advantage of it by pursuing bans by state initiative.