A Comparative Study of the Correlation between Social Capitals and Academic Achievements in Public Schools in the United States and Japan

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This three-years-research project has aimed to analyze the correlation between social capital and academic achievement within the schools in the United States and Japan.The research results as follows ;(1) Six school interviews and three research papers : I have visited six charter schools mainly in California and Massachusetts. I could have interviewed with school presidents, principals and teachers. Then I published three research papers, which included the case studies of three charter schools. Those are Life Learning Academy in San Francisco, Camino Nuevo Charter Academy in Los Angeles, and Francis W. Parker Essential School in Devens, Massachusetts.(2) Theoretical findings : Richard F. Elmore, Professor of Harvard University, proposed the concept of'internal accountability'through their case studies of public schools. I reconstructed his concept on the basis of the constructivism theory, and I proposed a new right of defining accountability by the school multi-stakeholders. Secondly, Anthony S. Bryk, former Professor of University of Chicago, and his research associates have empirically analyzed the trust which is a crucial element of social capitals. They categorized it into three types, that is, organic trust, contractual trust and relational trust. I also found in my case studies that effective charter schools with high academic achievements would be considerably full of relational trust within schools.Finally, I would like to mention two kinds of further researches. One is case studies of our(Japanese) effective schools, another is quantitative analysis of the correlation between social capital and school academic achievement.