A CROSS-NATIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE RELATION OF EDUCATIONAL TRUST TO EXPECTED EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT Carolyn Henry Barber University of Maryland, College Park Abstract While student perceptions of the fairness and trustworthiness of educational institutions have been shown to relate to civic participation, this relationship has not been extended to issues of continued participation in the education system. Using data from the IEA Civic Education Study of 14-year- olds, measures of trust in schools and perceptions of educational inequality are examined in their relationships with perceived educational attainment. The extent to which academic achievement levels mediate this relationship is also assessed. Additionally, differences are examined and discussed between genders. This relationship is observed in four countries-Cyprus, England, the Russian Federation, and the United States-who differ both in their systems of education and in nationwide expectations of educational attainment. INTRODUCTION One focus of the IEA Civic Education Study is to assess students’ attitudes and participation as members of various communities, both large and small. Research and theory relating to social capital, which has recently become ubiquitous throughout the social sciences, can be used to explain how these thoughts and behaviors develop. James Coleman introduced his conceptualization of social capital in 1988 to explain how the quality of social networks and relationships affect the individuals within them. In one of his earliest writings on the subject (Coleman 1988), he applies this theory to explain differences in educational achievement among students participating in the United States' High School and Beyond study. In these analyses, his measurements of social capital centered upon the students' parents. Particularly, he focused on the educational expectations parents had for their children, the attention they were able to provide for their children at home, and the quality of interaction between parents and schools. These social relationships between parent and child and parent and school were characteristic of a "closed" system, where each organization or individual in a community had contact with each other organization. Coleman believed that these systems allowed for the formation of strong social bonds that were rich in social capital. Throughout recent years, educational researchers have taken this notion of social capital and used it to explore educational inequalities. A review of literature on social capital its application to education (Dika & Singh 2002) shows how performance in school has been operationalized both in terms of educational achievement and attainment. While studies using educational achievement as an outcome variable have been limited to those using large data sets with specially-formed achievement tests (such as the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988), a wider variety of studies have measured academic attainment. Many of the studies assessing these two outcomes have focused on how low levels of social capital within the United States relate to low performance among at-risk students (Bryk & Schneider 2002, Jordan & Plank 2000, Qian & Blair 1999, Teachman et al. 1996). How do these bonds outlined in the theory of social capital translate to high educational aspirations or students? One view is that strong bonds allow for the transmission of both trust and social norms