Chapter 3

Equality of Educational Opportunity?

A Look at Social Class Differences and Inequalities

During the spring of her senior year of high school, Caitlin—author Jenny Stuber’s younger sister—was
honored with an award given out by the Children’s Defense Fund. Along with a handful of other students in
her hometown, and students in several cities across the United States, she was given the “Beat the Odds”
award, which honors “outstanding high schools students who have overcome tremendous adversity,
demonstrated academic excellence and given back to their communities”
(www.childrensdefense.org/programs/Beattheodds/#sthash.rIwq9stT.dpuf).

The adversity that Caitlin faced is that she lost her mother when she was 11 years old; in the years following,
her father struggled with financial, physical, and mental health issues, so that she lacked the stability and
guidance she needed. Despite these challenges, Caitlin embarked on several community service trips to Latin
America during high school, graduated near the top of her class, and was accepted at numerous prestigious
colleges. Later, she spent two years in South America doing research funded by a highly selective Fulbright
scholarship and is currently completing her PhD at Harvard University. Of the other students honored with
this award, some beat the odds by thriving after migrating to the United States from war-torn nations or
having dealt with the trauma of addiction and abuse within their families. Nearly all honorees came from an
economically disadvantaged background.

The story of Caitlin and the other awardees raises an important question: Why do some people achieve greater
educational success than others? For some, stories of such success illustrate the notion of the American Dream
—the belief that individuals born in the United States have a unique opportunity to overcome the
circumstances of their birth and achieve great things, regardless of their origins. Yet the fact that the title of
this award is “Beat the Odds” serves as a potent reminder of just how unlikely it is that people will, in fact,
defy the circumstances of their birth. When people “beat the odds,” they are, by definition, outliers: they defy a
well-documented pattern showing that those who grow up in disadvantaged circumstances have a difficult
time achieving educational success, while those who grow up in advantaged circumstances are more likely to
do so. The very fact that they “beat the odds” means that the odds are stacked against them.

This chapter focuses on the connection between social stratification and the educational system. Social
stratification refers to the organization of people in society into socioeconomic strata; that is, different and
unequal positions based on the traits associated with social class, namely income, wealth, education, prestige,
and power.

On the one hand, many view the educational system as “the great equalizer”: the preeminent social institution
in society where talent and hard work are rewarded; where individuals succeed or fail on the basis of their
own efforts, rather than family background. On the other hand, many scholars challenge this idea. Rather than
seeing the educational system as a meritocratic institution, critics argue that the educational system
perpetuates social class inequalities: it reproduces the existing system of social stratification, rather than
altering it. With respect to the open systems approach, the relevant question is whether students, as inputs, are
fundamentally transformed as outputs by the educational system.

To explore the relationship between social class stratification and educational inequalities, we take a rigorously
sociological approach, one that combines the micro- and macro-levels. At the micro-level, we assume that a
student’s experiences in school reflect what that student brings to the game. This includes their intelligence

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and efforts, their primary socialization, their knowledge of how to operate within the educational system, and
—especially when it becomes time for higher education—access to resources to fund one’s enrollment. Still,
every student navigates an educational system that has established rules. Therefore, we expand our exploration
of class inequalities in education by taking a look at the macro-level. Here, we show that the educational
system does not operate in a class-neutral manner. Instead, students from advantaged backgrounds experience
systematic advantages while those from less-advantaged backgrounds experience systematic barriers.

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Social Class Socialization and Educational Inequality

While educational inequalities exist with respect to race, class, and gender, those related to social class are the
deepest and most enduring. This is especially evident in the fact that college completion rates for the lowest-
income groups have not increased in the last 40 years, despite massive expansion of the system of higher
education. In the early years of schooling, social class inequalities exist in terms of performance on
standardized texts, and in later years with respect to whether one goes to college (enrollment), where one goes
(selectivity), and whether one graduates (attainment). In this section, we describe the primary socialization of
children from different social classes. This socialization lays the foundation for students’ later experiences in
schools, and highlights the class-based assumptions of how schools operate.

Stop for a moment and consider your educational experiences—whether you truly like school (now or in the
past), where you’re enrolled in college, what you’ve chosen to major in, and how you spend your time outside
of class. Looking at these experiences, what do they have to do with social class? If you had been raised in a
higher or lower social class, would you have ended up in the same place, or would you predict substantially
different outcomes in any or all of these domains? From the sociological perspective, how students feel about
their educational experiences and the outcomes that result (in terms of achievement and attainment) have
much to do with social class. How so?

It goes without saying that children raised in different social classes have different material realities (e.g.,
access to stuff), and that these different material realities likely impact their educational outcomes. Because
higher-income parents have greater ability to purchase books and educational tools, and to hire tutors or
educational specialists if needed, their children may excel in school. But beyond these differences in what
parents can buy, children raised in different social classes also experience different styles of socialization.
Socialization refers to the lifelong process by which we learn our society’s culture and develop our social
identities. It is made up of explicit interactions and intentional lessons, as well as subtle interactions and
unintended lessons. Sociologists find that children from different social classes are socialized differently, and
these different styles are associated with different results within the educational system. Let’s start with an
illustration.

Imagine you are standing in the checkout line at your local grocery store. In the lanes on each side of you, a
child is grabbing at the snacks placed near the registers and pleading for their parent to buy it. On the left, a
working-class parent simply tells the 5 year old “No.” When the child asks why not, her parent replies,
“Because I said so.” On the right, a middle-class parent responds differently to her child: “Sure, you can pick a
treat. But remember our conversation about refined sugar? I just want you to pick the healthy snack.” What do
these seemingly mundane interactions have to do with socialization and school success?

Classic research conducted by Melvin Kohn (1959), a social psychologist, helps unravel the answer. The fact
that one child was given permission to select a snack is not simply about the fact that his parents can better
afford the treat; it is about parental values. Using survey data gathered from 400 families, Kohn found that both
working- and middle-class parents value traits like honesty and dependability. Yet they differ in other aspects:
working-class parents place much greater emphasis on conformity (obedience), while middle-class parents
place greater emphasis on self-direction (motivation, personal responsibility).

In explaining these differences, Kohn (1963) stated: “Members of different social classes, by virtue of enjoying
(or suffering) different conditions of life, come to see the world differently—to develop different conceptions of
social reality, different aspirations and hopes and fears, different conceptions of the desirable” (p. 471). The
daily experiences of a working-class grocery clerk or factory worker cultivate in them an orientation towards
obedience, promptness, and teamwork. Middle-class lawyers and account managers have different daily
realities: their livelihoods depend on creativity and self-direction. At home, parents use child-rearing
techniques that reflect the realities they experience at work: a working-class parent may demand that the child

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stop touching snacks, while a middle-class parent may prompt the child to use self-control and critical thinking
when selecting a snack.

Such interactions are not isolated to the checkout line. They likely reflect a broad array of daily interactions
with their children at home. Over time, these interactions accumulate and shape how children behave at
school. While working-class children may be docile and compliant, middle-class children may respond actively
to teachers’ prompts for critical thinking and creativity. Working-class children may excel at coloring inside
the lines; more privileged students might ask why they are coloring in a picture someone already created for
them, and wonder if they might be able to create their own art.

Similar themes are articulated in the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. During the 1970s, he
developed the theory of social reproduction, which explains why—on average—kids from working-class
backgrounds struggle in school, while those from middle-class backgrounds experience greater academic
success. For him, the link wasn’t about intelligence, but about cultural capital. Cultural capital refers to the
symbolic, noneconomic assets that promote social mobility and success in school and the workplace. It is made
up of cultural knowledge and preferences, style of speech, dress and physical appearance, and educational
credentials. For Bourdieu, cultural capital is the mechanism by which children end up in the same social class
as their parents. Young children receive their cultural capital through primary socialization. It is transmitted
through the art and objects that hang on the walls at home, what is eaten for dinner and how (a leisurely meal
with conversation or a silent and rushed meal accompanied by the television), and how parents interact with
their children. Cultural capital shapes how children respond to story time at school or what they contribute
during show-and-tell, and how teachers react to these contributions.

The type of cultural capital children are socialized with is not random; instead, it reflects their class position.
Echoing Melvin Kohn, Bourdieu posited that people who inhabit different class positions experience different
material conditions: while middle-class people experience freedom, creativity, and autonomy, working-class
people experience rules, constraints, and supervision. These material conditions filter down and shape one’s
parenting style, so that middle-class parents emphasize creativity and autonomy, while working-class parents
emphasize obedience. These principles shape everyday interactions, such that a working-class family may eat
comforting and familiar foods that everyone in the family already likes, and engage in little mealtime
conversation, while a middle-class family experiments with new and exotic foods, while having in-depth
conversation.

Who really cares whether one family quietly dines on meatloaf while the other talks about Indian politics
while eating saag paneer? For Bourdieu, these seemingly minor differences in socialization produce different
stocks of cultural capital; once in school, these stocks of cultural capital are differently valued. The reason for
this, as Bourdieu and his co-author Jean-Claude Passeron (1977 [1990]) argued, is that schools do not operate in
a class-neutral manner. Rather, the norms and expectations of the educational system, and the type of cultural
capital valued therein, are those of the privileged classes. Teachers define “good students” as those who speak
quickly and directly, engage confidently with authority figures, and bring certain cultural knowledge to class.
If a teacher is delivering a lesson about the American Revolution, and a student has walked Boston’s Freedom
Trail or seen the musical “Hamilton,” then that student’s contribution to the discussion may mark him or her
as especially intelligent. Students who are street-smart or have knowledge of small engine repair (as opposed to
French culture) may zone out during this seemingly abstract lesson and have their cultural capital dismissed.
Over time, teachers may label that student as dull and unpromising, without recognizing the role that cultural
capital plays in this judgment.

Bourdieu does not blame working-class kids for having the “wrong” cultural capital; instead, he finds
problematic the fact that the educational system never directly explains to students these subtle cultural
expectations. As expressed by Bourdieu:
By doing away with giving explicitly to everyone what it implicitly demands of everyone, the education system demands of everyone alike
that they have what it does not give. This consists mainly of linguistic and cultural competence and that relationship of familiarity with
culture which can only be produced by family upbringing when it transmits the dominant culture.

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 (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977, p. 494)

Ultimately, Bourdieu and Passeron argue that children from privileged families succeed in school not because
they are naturally more gifted than their less-privileged peers, but because their cultural capital is better
matched with the expectations of the school system. Over time, students from less-privileged families may
reject school or opt out, as they come to feel that their knowledge is not respected and that they don’t “belong”
in school.

Influenced by Pierre Bourdieu, Annette Lareau (2003) developed one of the most comprehensive models of
class socialization to date. Based on lengthy ethnographic observation, Lareau coined the term concerted
cultivation to describe the parenting style of middle-class families and the logic of natural growth to describe
the parenting style of working-class families. These parenting styles differ in three ways. First, in terms of the
organization of daily life: middle-class children participate in numerous formal, age-graded extra curricular
activities—such as piano, soccer, and Scouts. Children in working-class families have looser schedules; they
participate in few, if any, organized activities and tend to hang out with siblings, cousins, and friends in the
neighborhood. Second, parents model different ways of interacting with institutional authorities. When riding
to a doctors’ appointment, for example, middle-class Ms. Williams encouraged her son Alex to think up a few
questions for the doctor, so that he could practice interacting with an expert. By contrast, when Katie Driver
was struggling in school, her working-class mother did not intervene in her teachers’ decisions, nor did she
request special testing. Instead, she trusted the teachers to use their expertise to help Katie, rather than trying
to guide their actions. Finally, Lareau observed social class differences in language use. As she accompanied
families to birthday parties, doctors’ appointments, and athletic contests, Lareau saw middle-class parents
actively cultivate in their children a sophisticated use of language, characterized by reasoning and negotiation.
In working-class homes, Lareau observed less talk, fewer questions and negotiations, and less effort by parents
to engage children as conversational partners.

Lareau’s findings on language socialization echo those of Betty Hart and Todd Risley (1995) (see Table 3.1). In
their classic study of language use in families from different class backgrounds, Hart and Risley found that
affluent families are more talkative than poor families. In daily conversations on mundane subjects like eating,
bathing, and toilet training, children of professionals heard an average of 2,153 words per hour, while the
children of poor parents heard about 616 words. In addition, conversations between affluent parents and their
children featured more encouragements than discouragements, a pattern that is reversed among lower-income
families. Finally, working-class children were more likely to be spoken to using directives, while children in
affluent families received more questions.

Table 3.1 Social Class Differences in Language Exposure

More recent national data also show that children from different social classes experience different language
environments during primary socialization. Table 3.2 shows that preschool-aged children raised by parents
with higher levels of education are more likely to be read stories by a family member compared to children
from less economically advantaged families (US Department of Education, 2016). Others report that families
with higher socioeconomic status are more likely to use child directed speech at home (speaking directly to
children, asking them questions, and engaging them in conversation), and that this style of verbal interaction is
associated with higher levels of academic achievement (Rowe, 2008).

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So why do these differences in language socialization matter for performance at school? First, social class
differences in language matter because they are the foundation for early academic performance. One major
predictor of early educational success is the size of a child’s vocabulary—which is predicted by the total
number of words they have heard. By age 3, children from affluent families have vocabularies that are twice as
large of children from poor families (Hart and Risley, 1995). Looking at academic readiness and educational
disparities among 4-year-olds, data collected by the US Department of Education (2014) shows that notable
disparities exist in early reading and math achievement based on parental income (see Table 3.3). Class
differences even exist in seemingly basic, non-school-related skills like “color knowledge.”

Beyond academic readiness, another reason that patterns of language socialization matter has to do with their
abstract “pay off” at school. If a child has been read to at home consistently, and asked questions while hearing
the stories, the child will be immediately
Table 3.2 Social Class Differences in Early Educational Enrichment

Read to Child 3+ Times per Week

Less than HS Degree 73%
Some College/Associate's Degree 85%
Bachelor's Degree 92%
Graduate Degree 93%
Poor 74%
Non-Poor 88%

Source: US Department of Education, 2016

Table 3.3 Social Class Differences in Academic Achievement at 48 Months

Early Reading Scale Mathematics Scale Color Knowledge (Percent Scoring

Score Score 10/10)
Lowest Income 16.7 19.1 16.2
Middle Income 21 24.2 50.9
Highest
26.3 29.2 67.8
Income

Source: US Department of Education, 2016

able to “play along” during story time at school (Heath, 1983). Children who have not been socialized to answer
seemingly obvious questions like, “What color is the lamb?” may be perplexed by the teacher’s question,
hesitant to respond, and perhaps labeled academically deficient, as a consequence. Indeed, research confirms
that active reading and storytelling during childhood is related to stronger literacy skills in early grades
(Blewitt et al., 2009; Wilder, 2014).

Looking more broadly at the culture of parenting, Annette Lareau argues that as a result of the logic of natural
growth, working-class children develop an emerging sense of constraint. They are socialized to defer to
teachers—and later bosses and landlords. Without extensive participation in extra curricular activities, they
have less experience interacting with strangers, traveling, and being out of their comfort zone. The concerted
cultivation of middle-class kids, on the other hand, produces an emerging sense of entitlement. Through their
daily interactions, they hone their critical thinking skills, learn to feel comfortable in new situations, and make
sure when interacting with authorities that their needs are met. Lareau’s work illustrates the link between
social class socialization and the reproduction of class inequality: over time, middle-class children acquire
forms of cultural capital that match the expectations of teachers and the school system, while working-class
children acquire forms of cultural capital that sometimes clash with these expectations.

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Figure 3.1 Middle and Upper -Middle-Class Parents Have More Verbal Interaction With Their Children. This Paves the Way for Early
School Success Source: iStock

Inspired by Annette Lareau’s pioneering work, other scholars have explored how class socialization translates
to the primary school settings. Research by Jessi Streib (2011) and Jessica Calarco (2011) shows that by age 4,
children are influential “class actors.” Through interactions with peers and teachers, preschool children are
already actively reproducing class inequalities through their linguistic styles. In their separate ethnographic
studies, these scholars found that upper-middle-class children speak, interrupt, and ask for help more than
working-class children. In so doing, they are able to practice their language skills and gain attention from
teachers; moreover, their attention-seeking behavior silences working-class students, giving them less influence
in the classroom and fewer opportunities to practice their language skills. Jessica Calarco (2014) shows that
these behaviors have been “coached” at home, where “working-class parents stressed ‘no-excuses’ problem-
solving, encouraging children to respect teachers’ authority by not seeking help. . . . [and] middle-class parents
instead taught ‘by-any-means’ problem-solving, urging children to negotiate with teachers for assistance” (p.
1016). By calling on their teachers for help, students from an affluent background receive attention and,
consequently, “create their own advantages and contribute to inequalities in the classroom” and beyond
(Calarco, 2011, p. 862).

By the time children enter kindergarten, social class differences in academic achievement are already clear.
These differences are illustrated in Table 3.4. Findings like these have inspired massive, and in many ways
successful, national initiatives like Head Start and
Table 3.4 Social Class Dif ferences in Academic Achievement, Entering Kindergarten

Mean Reading Score Mean Math Score

Lowest Income 32.4 23.7
Middle Income 37 30.4
Highest Income 43.1 37.1

Source: US Department of Education, 2014

Early Head Start, and, in some states, voluntary pre-K programs. An array of not-for-profit groups embrace
these research findings and offer a remarkable insight: to some extent, the most innovative and effective
educational interventions can be low cost, if not free. Based on the finding that the average 3-year-old from an
affluent family has already heard 3 million more words than their peer raised in a poor family, the “Three
Million Words” initiative has developed programs that work from the assumption that if lower-income parents
can be trained to talk more to their kids—with warmth and encouragement, on just about any subject—they
can help close the early social class gap in academic readiness and better prepare their children for school

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success. In this instance, talk really is cheap, but can have an incredible return on investment.

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Social Class and Equality of Educational Opportunity: Systemic Sources of
Difference

It is clear that social class differences exist in childhood socialization, and that these differences differentially
equip children for school success. Statistically significant differences in tests of academic achievement exist
even before children enter the school system, and persist through 8th grade and on into high school. Figures 3.2
and 3.3 illustrate the achievement gap that exists in 4th and 8th grades between students who are eligible for
free or reduced lunch (students with poverty or low-income status) and students who are not. Sociologist Sean
Reardon (2013), a leading expert on the social class gap in academic achievement, has found that the social
class gap in education actually expands as children move through the educational system. Moreover, Reardon’s
research shows that family income is a better predictor of academic success than race, and that the social class
gap in academic achievement has increased at the same time that the racial gap in achievement has narrowed.
Indeed, the social class gap in achievement is about 30–60 percent larger now than it was during the late 1970s
(Reardon, 2011).

While the social class gap in achievement is well established, explanations for the gap are intensely debated.
On the one hand, there are those who argue that much of the gap exists due to processes occurring outside of
school, like those dealing with parenting

Figure 3.2A Social Class Gaps in 4th Grade Reading Achievement Source: NAEP, 2016, http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015

Figure 3.2B Social Class Gaps in 4th Grade Math Achievement Source: NAEP, 2016, http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015

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Figure 3.3A Social Class Gaps in 8th Grade Reading Achievement Source: NAEP, 2016, http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015

Figure 3.3B Social Class Gaps in 8th Grade Math Achievement Source: NAEP, 2016, http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015

and socialization. Indeed, Sean Reardon (2011) suggests that the growing social class gap in achievement is not
so much a reflection of lower-income children lagging behind or being failed by the school system, but a
reflection of the intensive parenting styles and investments in children’s cognitive development by affluent
parents (Duncan and Murnane, 2011; Kornrich and Furstenberg, 2013). This perspective, however, can be hard
to accept, as it largely excuses schools from producing the social class gap in education. Therefore, another side
of the debate implicates the school system itself in perpetuating class inequality. These critics point towards the
system of funding and the allocation of resources, as well as practices within school with respect to tracking
and quality of instruction, as either causing or not doing enough to close the social class gaps in education. In
this next section we focus on the processes occurring within the school system, showing whether and how
these dynamics shape social class differences and inequalities in education.

Inequalities in School Funding and Resources

As anyone who has participated in competitive school activities knows, schools vary considerably in terms of
facilities and resources. While your high school may have an impressive stadium with nice bleachers and
beautiful green fields, the opposing team may play with shoddy equipment, a collapsing field goal, and rusty
bleachers. Attending a debate competition may similarly reveal differences in library facilities, access to

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technology, and coaching resources. So why do schools differ so much in their resources and how do these
differences matter?

Any understanding of class inequalities in the educational system begins with a discussion of how the principle
of localism informs school funding in the United States, and how the localized system of funding may
exacerbate class differences in educational opportunities. The principle of localism guides the structure of
education in the United States. This means that what is taught in schools, how teachers are hired, fired, and
evaluated, and how schools are funded, are determined at the local level, namely by each state and its districts.
With respect to the school curriculum, founders of the US public school system thought that what students
need to know in Massachusetts may be different from what students need to know in Georgia. This approach is
different from what happens in most European countries, where the educational system is organized at the
national level. In France, if it’s 11:00 a.m. on November 12th, 3rd graders across the nation are learning the
same lesson. There, each school is also funded using the same formula. In the United States, by contrast, only a
small percentage of school funding comes from the federal level, so that funding formulas differ across states
and districts. On average, schools in the United States receive about half their funding from local tax revenues,
which are derived largely from property taxes collected at the district level. Because the property tax base
varies across districts, per pupil funding levels vary across districts, as well.

A 30-minute drive across a typical urban area in the United States makes clear why the structure of school
funding in the United States sets the stage for class inequalities in education. Our drive begins in a stable
suburban area, one dotted with malls, movie theaters, business parks, and homes valued at more than $250,000.
Moving towards the city center (or out towards the rural areas, for that matter), we see a changing landscape:
homes with lower property values and eventually plenty of abandoned lots; first, a ring of older strip malls and
eventually, in the urban core, run-down storefronts and plenty of tax-exempt properties like churches,
hospitals, and museums. This contrast reveals why some school districts—especially those in newer, thriving
suburbs populated with middle- and upper-middle-class families— have larger budgets than others. In the
United States as a whole, the average per pupil funding is about $10,700. Yet in metropolitan areas like
Chicago, per pupil expenditures on instruction range from $9,800 within the boundaries of Chicago, to $11,800
in the first-ring suburb of Evanston and $13,800 in the affluent second-ring New Trier school district
(www.illinoisreportcard.com). (These data refer only to expenditures on instruction and do not include
additional expenditures on operations, like building maintenance.)

Differences in funding levels across districts ultimately translate into resource differences. Because we live in a
class-segregated society, this translates into class differences in access to educational resources. Figure 3.4
shows that schools serving low-income students are less likely than those serving higher-income students to
have a working science lab or independent spaces devoted to art, music, or athletics. Low-income schools are
also more likely to rely on portable classrooms (Chaney and Lewis, 2007). So how do these differences in school
resources translate into class differences in educational achievement? This is a complex question, one that
scholars are still working hard to answer (Gamoran and Long, 2007).

Figure 3.4 Social Class and School Resources Source: Chaney and Lewis, 2007

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Although educational activist Jonathan Kozol did not statistically investigate the impact of educational
resources on student learning, in his classic book, Savage Inequalities (1991), he offered a series of vivid
portraits, illustrating the dramatic differences that exist across the United States in educational environments.
In poor inner cities like East St. Louis and the Bronx, he found public schools with crumbling walls,
overflowing sewage and asthma-triggering mold, out-of-date books, and inoperable science labs. Out in the
affluent suburbs he found schools with beautiful facilities and lovely landscaping, state-of-the art science
equipment, and courses to inspire the aspiring historian, engineer, and graphic designer.

For Kozol, such social class disparities in educational environments are cause for concern, because they both
create different and unequal opportunities to learn and generate different and unequal desires to learn. This is
because students see their school as a reflection of their worth as students, and draw conclusions from it about
whether education matters and will pay off. For some students, resource differences matter because in their
science labs, books and computers, and landscaped campus they see an investment that will pay off. When
asked about the possibility of raising taxes to raise the funding levels of lower-income schools, one student
from the affluent suburb of Rye, New York, stated: “I don’t see how that benefits me” (p. 128). From her
vantage point, the system is fair and meritocratic and, therefore, stimulates additional hard work and
investment. For others, the lesson learned from the lack of resources is, “You are ugly, so we crowd you into
ugly places. You are dirty so it will not hurt to pack you in to dirty places” (Kozol quoting his friend Elizabeth,
p. 179). Tunisia, a student attending an impoverished school in DC, said that her ugly educational environment
makes her “feel ashamed” (p. 181). This shame is made worse, according to Kozol (again quoting his friend
Elizabeth), by the fact that these children “know very well that the system is unfair” and that they are “living
in a rich society” (p. 178). At some point, the lack of a science lab makes it difficult to learn science, but also to
understand why one should care about learning science in the first place.

Aside from these vivid portraits, what do statistical analyses tell us about the relationship between school
resources and educational achievement? Motivated by concerns of racial equity at the height of the Civil
Rights movement, the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare hired sociologist James Coleman and
a team of research associates to better understand the role of family background, segregation, and school
resources in producing unequal educational outcomes. In 1966, their findings were published as the
groundbreaking Coleman Report (also called the Equality of Educational Opportunity report). Drawing on data
from 645,000 students, across five grade levels, Coleman and his team concluded that a school’s curriculum,
resources, and facilities have little impact on student achievement. Instead, these authors showed, the students’
social class background, as well as the composition of the school—namely in terms of the racial and social class
background of other students—made the biggest difference in student achievement.

In 1972, another landmark study confirmed these findings. In dismissing the role of “school effects” on student
achievement, Christopher Jencks and his colleagues reported that schools have little effect on educational
outcomes or later adult earnings:
[T]he evidence suggests that equalizing educational opportunity would do very little to make adults more equal. If all elementary schools
were equally effective, cognitive inequality among sixth-graders would decline less than 3 percent . . . cognitive inequality among twelfth-
graders would hardly decline at all and disparities in their eventual attainment would decline less than 1 percent. Eliminating all economic
and academic obstacles to college attendance might somewhat reduce disparities in educational attainment, but the change would not be
large.
(Aronson, 1978, p. 409)

Equalizing schools, Jencks estimated, would increase the educational attainment of disadvantaged students by
an average of about one half year. Jencks concluded that schools themselves have little impact on adult life
chances, given the disproportionate and enduring impact of family background (e.g., income and attitudes
towards schooling).

Because this line of research dismisses the impact of schools (for better or worse), researchers and educators
have been frustrated by the findings. After all, teachers can’t do much to change income inequality in the
United States, nor can they change the socioeconomic standing of the students in their classrooms. Teachers
want to feel like what they do matters, and politicians, administrators, and parents want to know that the

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money spent on public schooling has some impact on student outcomes. But it is unclear whether simply
spending more money will have a measurably positive impact on student learning, in part because schools
have different funding priorities and spend their money on different things. These findings have led
researchers to explore how the things that schools can control may impact student outcomes and social class
(and racial) gaps in education.

Among the things that schools can control, researchers generally agree that teacher quality has the most
significant impact on student learning. “Teacher quality” is a broad concept, and includes traits like years of
experience, general academic ability and scores on standardized exams (like NTE/Praxis and TECAT), college
coursework, and ongoing professional development and certification/licensing. Using data from across the
United States, Linda Darling-Hammond (2000, p. 32) concluded that “when aggregated at the state level,
teacher quality variables appear to be more strongly related to student achievement than class sizes, overall
spending levels, [and] teacher salaries (at least when unadjusted for cost of living differentials).” When looking
at specific attributes of “teacher quality,” she concluded that the percentage of teachers who are fully certified
and majored in the field in which they teach are more powerful predictors of student achievement than the
teacher’s education level (whether the teacher has a master’s degree). A wide array of studies—some at the
state-level and others using national data—echo these findings (Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain, 2005; Wayne and
Youngs, 2003). Despite this consensus, debate exists over the size of these effects (Chetty, Friedman, and
Rockoff, 2014), whether they exist equally in mathematics and reading achievement (Clotfelter, Ladd, and
Vigdor, 2007; Rockoff, 2004), and whether they have an enduring impact on chances for attending college and
experiencing social mobility (Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff, 2011). Still, the array of characteristics associated
with “quality teaching” is generally shown to have a significant impact on student learning. This is relevant to
the resource debate because schools with larger budgets are typically better able to hire quality teachers.

When looking further at the things that schools can control, research shows that spending money to reduce
class size may also positively impact student learning. The best evidence for this comes from an experiment
that began in 1985, where 6,500 elementary school students across the state of Tennessee were randomly
assigned to one of three conditions: classrooms of “regular size” (22–25), smaller classrooms (13–17), or
classrooms of regular size with an additional teacher’s aide. The study found that students assigned to smaller
classes scored higher on standardized tests. For example, 1st graders in regular-sized classrooms had math
scores that averaged in the 48th percentile, while students in the smaller classrooms scored in the 59th
percentile. In smaller classrooms, more learning took place due to fewer distractions from fellow students and
more opportunity for personalized attention. Even more impressive is that these learning gains persisted once
students returned to larger classrooms in later grades (Finn and Achilles, 1999; Krueger and Whitmore, 2001;
Mosteller, 1995). It stands to reason, then, that schools with ample budgets are better positioned to reduce class
sizes in the interest of student achievement.

Since the 1990s, changes in school funding policies offer a new opportunity to explore whether and how school
resources matter for social class disparities in education. In 27 states across the nation, court battles have led to
increased pressure for “adequate” funding for lower-income schools (per the wording of their state’s
constitution); as a result, in these 27 states, low-income districts now receive 8 percent more funding than high-
income districts (Lafortune, Rothstein, and Schanzenbach, 2015). So did these cash infusions reduce any of the
documented social class gaps in education? According to Julien Lafortune and co-authors, these reforms
reduced the social class gap on the NAEP exam (National Assessment of Educational Progress) by 20 percent;
meanwhile, the test score gap increased in the 22 states that did not pass school finance reforms. Looking at the
longer-term impact of school funding increases, Jackson, Johnson, and Persico (2015) found that when poorly
funded schools receive a budget boost, students attending those schools experience higher graduation rates and
educational attainment, as well as higher earnings. These positive effects were especially pronounced for
lower-income children.

And so the debate continues. Because schools spend their money on such different things—from instructional
technologies to high-quality teachers to building repair—it is impossible to say that more money, in and of
itself, will reduce the social class gap in education. That said, researchers have found evidence that specific

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funding priorities are tangibly linked to higher student achievement, and that concentrating resources on less-
advantaged students can have measurable long-term benefits.

The Structure of Schooling and Instructional Differences Across Schools

Because education is delivered by teachers, and because teachers have the most sustained and direct impact on
students, researchers wonder whether social class gaps in education may be produced—at least in part—by the
social organization of school and pedagogical variations across schools. Although statistical analyses clearly
indicate that high-quality teaching produces greater learning gains, linking these patterns directly to social
class has been more difficult. Yet researchers have speculated about this link using theoretical assumptions and
qualitative inquiry.

In their classic work Schooling in Capitalist America, economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1976)
argued that the educational system, rather than operate as a place where hardworking students can move up
the class ladder, is designed to keep people within their social class positions. According to these authors, the
“structure of the educational experience is admirably suited to nurturing attitudes and behaviors consonant
with participation in the labor force” (p. 9). What Bowles and Gintis mean is that the hidden curriculum of the
schools is designed to inculcate in students a sense of punctuality, conformity, and deference to authority.
Through regimented and repetitive daily activities, where students focus on memorization and celebrating
American achievements, the educational system dulls students’ curiosity and creativity and, according to these
authors, produces compliant workers who will not rock the boat and will accept their subordinate positions
within the class structure.

The principle at the heart of Schooling in Capitalist America is called “correspondence theory,” where Bowles
and Gintis argue that schools are set up to mirror and meet the needs of the capitalist system. In mirroring the
capitalist system, students learn how to function within a complex, hierarchical organization under the
authority of a teacher (and later, boss); in meeting the needs of the capitalist system, the educational system
produces a mass of dull, compliant students, and a smaller segment of creative, critical thinkers who manage
their subordinates. Bowles and Gintis show that as the educational system was built in the United States,
capitalist elites influenced the structure of education by influencing school board elections and placing
economic leaders in positions where they could shape the curriculum and structure of education. Today, class
inequalities in education and the lack of social mobility in society are partially rooted in a curriculum that
emphasizes uncritical celebration of American history and an educational model that emphasizes
memorization and finding the right answer (Apple, 2013, 2014). Teachers “teach to the test” and students
become rooted in their class positions through their exposure to a hidden and formal curriculum that cultivates
an ideology that justifies inequality and emphasizes individualism and a belief in meritocracy —the notion that
we live in a society where people earn their class positions through competition and hard work (i.e., their own
merits ).

Looking more closely at the formal curriculum, textbooks tend to celebrate the accomplishments of
industrialists, “Robber Barons,” high-tech pioneers, and the capitalist system, while ignoring instances of US
forces attacking workers or breaking up labor unions. The accomplishments of workers and unions are omitted,
obscured, or downplayed, as are the negative consequences of capitalism (monopolies, price fixing, market
crashes, low wages, and poor working conditions) (Chafel, 1997; Loewen, 2007; Zinn, 2005). In her classic work,
Jean Anyon (1979) noted that textbooks
imply that we should regard the poor as responsible for their own poverty: poverty is a consequence of the failure of individuals, rather than
the failure of society to distribute economic resources universally. This ideology encourages education and other actions that attempt to
change the individual, while leaving the unequal economic structures intact.

(Anyon, 1979, p. 383)

The school system, in other words, socializes students to blame lower-income people for their problems and
ignore the macro-level factors that contribute to the success of some and failure of others. Collectively, these

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scholars see the reproduction of social class inequality as inherent in the structure of schooling.

Moving from a theoretical approach to an empirically grounded approach, Jean Anyon (1981) explored class
differences in education by looking at curriculum and instruction within schools serving different social class
populations. Through her ethnographic analyses, she found that teachers at schools serving working-class
students emphasize rule-following and respect for authority. Their lessons focused on memorization of facts
and seemingly mindless completion of worksheets, rather than activities involving analysis or interpretation.
As these students moved through the elementary grades, they became increasingly disengaged and pessimistic
about their abilities and college prospects. In their conversations, students told Anyon they were bored
“Because he [the teacher] don’t teach us nothin’,” while the teachers characterized students as “lazy.” Another
teacher said her primary responsibility was simply to “keep them [students] busy.”

Teachers in schools serving economically privileged children, by contrast, emphasize independence, creativity,
and critical thinking. Students in these schools were taught to see themselves as creators of knowledge,
whereas their less-privileged peers were socialized to see themselves as passive recipients of knowledge. The
textbooks of privileged students encouraged higher-order thinking and emphasized “competing worldviews”
and multiple interpretations of cultural and historic events; in schools serving lower-income students,
textbooks provided a narrow and sanitized version of history—one that celebrates business leaders and
downplays the contributions of working-class people to building the United States.

As influential as Anyon’s research has been, few researchers have comprehensively updated her work, so we
are left to hypothesize about whether today schools serving different social classes provide their students with
different and unequal instruction. More recent studies suggest that the emphasis on a rich reading environment
is more evident in higher-income schools, with more basic engagement with phonics and use of more basic
reading materials in lower-income schools (Cummins, 2007; Duke, 2000). With respect to what can be done
about these dynamics, Jones and Vagle (2013) suggest that teacher education should more thoroughly
incorporate a social class critique into its “diversity for educators” courses. This course material would promote
“class sensitive pedagogy” in which, first, teachers become better educated on class issues like labor history,
taxation and welfare policies, and movements for universal healthcare and a living wage; second, educators
would be trained to “explicitly critique the way power and privilege operate in society and in schools and
support students’ questioning of why privilege and hierarchical thinking can seem ‘natural’ ” (p. 132).

Social Class, Tracking, and Instructional Differences Within Schools

Consider for a moment your own educational experience. Did it ever feel as if there were separate schools
within your schools? On an academic level, were there separate worlds within your high school? It’s not
simply that differences between schools contribute to class inequalities in education. Differences also exist
within schools, and researchers have connected these differences to social class inequalities in educational
outcomes. Tracking refers to the separation of students into courses based on academic ability, whether for
individual classes or the entire curriculum. In some schools, students pick and choose among standard, honors,
and AP courses; in other schools, students take an entire “International Baccalaureate” (IB) college prep
program while other students are enrolled in a standard track of courses. Supporters of tracking argue that
differentiated instruction serves the needs of all students, and allows students to learn in an environment best
suited to their abilities (Carbonaro, 2005; Gamoran, 2009; Gamoran and Mare, 1989). Critics worry that
academic tracking perpetuates class inequalities in education.

The mechanism that links tracking with social class differences in education is the method by which track
placements are made. Research shows that track placements are closely correlated with students’
socioeconomic background (Mitchell and Mitchell, 2005; Oakes, 1985). That is, affluent students are more likely
to be enrolled in higher-track classes, while less affluent students are more likely to be enrolled in standard
academic courses and vocational tracks (Lewis and Cheng, 2006). In part, this is because more affluent students
score better on the tests that are used to make track assignments; it also reflects teachers’ subjective assessment
of where students “belong” and parents’ requests for their children to be placed in particular courses (Tach and

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Farkas, 2006). Each of these determinants, whether the seemingly objective nature of an achievement test or
the subjective assessment of a teacher, opens the possibility for social class to influence a student’s track
placement.

Once students are placed in “tracked” courses—standard English versus AP English, for example—they
experience unequal gains in learning. In fact, while it is clear that high-achieving students learn more in
advanced courses than they would in standard courses, it appears that students in lower-track classes don’t just
learn less than their peers in advanced classes, they actually experience a learning loss (compared to what they
would learn if enrolled in classes that include higher-ability students). Greater learning gains in higher-track
classes reflect the fact that higher-track classes tend to be taught by more experienced and effective teachers
(Kalogrides, Loeb, and Béteille, 2013). Novice teachers, who are more likely to be placed in “standard” courses,
are consistently less effective at raising student achievement compared to their more experienced peers
(holding other factors constant).

Using ethnographic studies to look more closely at what happens in tracked classrooms, researchers show
significant differences in educational environments. In her classic book, Keeping Tracking: How Schools
Structure Inequality, Jeannie Oakes (1985) characterizes high-track classes as transmitting “high status
knowledge”—knowledge that emphasizes critical thinking, creativity, and self-direction. Lower-track classes,
meanwhile, transmit “low status knowledge”—knowledge that emphasizes conformity, memorization, practical
skills, and punctuality. She found that teachers in low-track classrooms spent less time on instruction and more
time on “book-keeping.” More recent research echoes the observation that higher-tracked classes tend to be
verbally rich environments, where a discussion-based approach leads to more open-ended questioning and
critical thinking, which results in tangible learning gains (Applebee et al., 2003). In a comparative study of two
high school language arts classrooms, Watanabe (2008) found that students in high-track classes experience
more engagement with challenging and meaningful curricula, more writing assignments in more diverse
genres, and more feedback from teachers, while students in low-track classes learned how to provide objective
answers on multiple-choice exams. Teachers also seem to exhibit warmer interactions with high-track students
and ignore or isolate low-track students (Clark-Ibáñez, 2005). Over time, students in higher academic tracks
learn more, develop a worldview based on curiosity and open-ended inquiry, learn to trust teachers, and
acquire cultural capital in the former of deeper familiarity with classic texts and historical and cultural
references. As a consequence, tracking produces students not simply with different academic abilities, but with
different views of the world and their place within it.

Do these findings mean that “de-tracking” and less emphasis on differentiated instruction would produce
greater equity within the educational environment? Some studies show that careful and intensive de-tracking
efforts can meaningfully increase the learning of students who otherwise would be assigned to lower-track
classes (Gamoran and Weinstein, 1998; Welner et al., 2008). Doing so, however, requires extensive retraining
and rethinking by teachers (Watanbe et al., 2007). Unfortunately, opposition to such efforts often emerges
because teachers fear that they lack the complex skills needed to teach in a differentiated classroom or they
hold onto rigid beliefs about the deeply rooted nature of intelligence (Burris and Garrity, 2008; Rubin, 2008). In
addition, affluent, higher-ability students and their parents put up resistance to de-tracking (Oakes and Wells,
2004), given the possible—though not well-documented—losses to their learning.

Exceptional Advantage: The Case of Elite Private Schools

Inequalities between schools are especially evident in the case of elite, private prep schools—schools that look
and function as a combination of a fancy country club and Hogwarts or a classic English college. With a high
price tag, selective admissions, and class sizes of about 15, students take literature courses with titles like “Road
Trip!” and “Rebels and Nonconformists,” and social science courses like “War and Peace in Modern Times,”
“Capitalism and Its Critics,” and “Why Are Poor Nations Poor?” Unlike working-class schools where
memorization, patriotism, and respect for capitalism are reinforced, these schools emphasize creativity,
problem solving, and critical thinking—thinking critically even about the country and economic system that

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allowed many students’ families to establish fortunes and accumulate considerable privilege. Outside of the
classroom, students are typically required to participate in competitive athletics and community service; extra
curricular options are diverse, and opportunities to study abroad both ample and expected.

Ultimately, elite prep schools cultivate in their students a sense of privilege and importance, and pave the path
for students to ascend to positions of power and privilege (Cookson and Persell, 1985; Khan, 2011). They do so
by allowing students to acquire cultural capital. Students take art history and read the classics, engage in
critical issues, practice professional dress daily (dress codes typically require shirt and tie for boys), and acquire
a sense of being a global citizen. The chance to build social capital is also unparalleled, as these schools have
illustrious alumni and students who come from families that are leaders in business, education, medicine,
entertainment, and the arts; authors and politicians routinely give guest lectures on campus. In addition, many
of these schools maintain tight connections to admissions counselors at top colleges and universities, so that
their students have an advantage in the college application process— even when their SAT scores and grade
point averages (GPAs) are lower than an applicant from an unknown urban high school (Stevens, 2007). All
told, these schools offer already privileged students an advantage in maintaining their privilege—all for an
annual fee of $50,000–60,000.

Figure 3.5 Elite Prep Schools Provide an Exceptional Education and Prepare Students to Become Affluent Leaders of the Next Generation
Source: iStock

Social Class, Learning, and the Structure of the Academic Calendar

Finally, while disparities within and between schools are clearly important for shaping social class disparities
in education, there may be an even more fundamental source of these gaps; one rooted in a very basic and
rarely questioned macro-level aspect of schooling. A growing body of research shows that the way the school
calendar is structured—specifically by giving students time off during the summer—contributes to social class
gaps in achievement. While a test score gap exists at the beginning of the school year, it narrows during the
school year, as disadvantaged students experience the measurable benefits of academic instruction (Alexander,
Entwisle, and Olson, 2007; Downey, von Hippel, and Broh, 2004; Ready, 2010). Yet in a process called the
“summer setback” or “summer learning loss,” lower-income students lose about a month and a half’s worth of
what they learned in school. By the time students reach the 5th grade, less-advantaged students have lost
nearly a year and a half’s worth of learning due to an academic calendar that includes an extended summer
break (Allington and McGill-Franzen, 2003; Cooper, Borman, and Fairchild, 2010).

Learning loss occurs, in large part, because the brain is a muscle, and it requires ongoing stimulation to remain
strong; just like anyone who stops working out, muscle loss is inevitable. Because minority students have less
access to age-appropriate reading materials in the home, without reading practice, skills decline over the

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summer. Meanwhile, advantaged students typically spend their summers in ways that maintain, if not extend,
their academic skills, as parents maintain language-rich home environments, enroll their children in camps,
and participate with them in cultural enrichment (Chin and Phillips, 2004; Roksa and Potter, 2011). This
research challenges the findings of researchers who have dismissed the independent role of the educational
system in shaping academic outcomes. Indeed, it shows the power of formal education to equalize learning
outcomes and overcome class differences in parenting styles and resources—at least during the school year.

The policy takeaways from this body of research are two-fold. First, the structure of schooling could be
reworked to promote greater educational equity across social class and racial lines. Although it might be wildly
unpopular, extending the school year and reducing the length of the summer break would go a long way
towards reducing these gaps. About 4 percent of public schools in the United States have adopted “year-round”
calendars. Second, because of the lack of support for reworking the academic calendar, schools and
communities can and should provide supplementary instruction during the summer months, and at the very
least, access to age-appropriate reading materials (McCombs, Augustine, and Schwartz, 2011). Although
researchers have not yet uncovered definitive evidence that longer school years will close the social class gap
in test scores (Patall, Cooper, and Allen, 2010), we know that the structure of schooling currently contributes to
social class inequalities in education.

International Interlude: Class Inequalities in Global Context

One striking finding regarding education in the United States is that despite the massive expansion of the
system of higher education, the social class gap in educational attainment has not significantly decreased over
time. But to what extent have class inequalities in education been reduced in other Western Industrialized
countries? Does the educational system serve as a site for social mobility in other countries? In fact, “persistent
inequality” characterizes the educational systems of many Western Industrialized countries (Pfeffer, 2008;
Shavit and Blossfeld, 1993). Taking an historical look at data from 13 nations, researchers “demonstrated that
the relative odds of entering secondary and higher education for persons from different social origins remained
essentially unchanged throughout much of the 20th century” (Gamoran, 2001, p. 142). This finding held in a
diverse set of wealthy, developed nations, including the United States, West Germany, England and Wales,
Italy, Switzerland, Taiwan, Japan, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Israel. Only in Sweden and the
Netherlands did researchers find evidence of true expansion of opportunity for students from lower social class
origins. Class inequality in education appears to be most persistent in countries where secondary (high school)
education is characterized by rigid educational tracks, where some students are almost automatically destined
for college and other students nearly destined for dead-end educational and occupational outcomes.

How can we explain the persistent social class gap in educational attainment, even as the system itself has
expanded? Perhaps sociologist Adam Gamoran (2001, p. 144) said it best: “As long as societies are stratified,
privileged parents will seek ways to pass on their advantages to their children. Because schooling is the major
sorting mechanism, persons in positions of power and advantage will use schooling to preserve their positions
and those of their children.” Two technical terms that have been coined to explain the persistence of social
class advantage are maximally maintained inequality (MMI) and effectively maintained inequality (EMI)
(Lucas, 2001; Raftery and Hout, 1993). These terms describe the process whereby students from lower-class
families initially achieve higher levels of education, and thereby close the gap between themselves and students
from upper-income families. When that happens, students from affluent backgrounds respond by striving to
achieve the next higher level of education and push their educational attainments ever higher. This is called
maximally maintained inequality. Effectively maintained inequality, by contrast, refers to the process whereby
students from more affluent families “monopolize” positions at elite colleges and universities, while students
from less affluent families are relegated to two-year colleges or less-selective universities. Even though
students from different class backgrounds attain the same level of education, students from more affluent
families are able to maintain an advantage by graduating with more prestigious credentials. As explained by
Sigal Alon (2009, p. 732), “when high-status groups reach a saturation point at a certain level of education,
inequality simply shifts upward to the next level of attainment, thereby perpetuating relative class differences.”

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The more things change, the more they stay the same, as privileged parents and their children essentially raise
the bar of educational expectations when their advantage becomes challenged.

Given the importance of education for social mobility, middle-class status, and a civic society, researchers
continue to explore the link between social class and educational attainment. Most societies strive to be
meritocracies, after all. Some newer research provides reason for hope, namely evidence of a declining role of
social class in predicting educational attainment and a reduction in the social class gap across many European
countries among those born in the second half of the twentieth century, especially in Sweden, the Netherlands,
Britain, Germany, France (Breen et al., 2009), and Spain (Ballarino et al., 2009). Yet not all researchers agree
with these optimistic results (Haim and Shavit, 2013). Thus, until further evidence emerges, it appears that
systems of education across the globe are characterized by pervasive and persistent social class inequalities.

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