Schooling & Society Assessment

Labaree

• There are 3 competing goals for American education

• Disagreement about “correct” goal causes dissatisfaction with the schooling system

Democratic equality [Labaree]

• Prepare citizens to participate in democracy

• The citizen

• public good: everybody enjoys the benefits despite not all contributing

Social efficiency [Labaree]

• Train workers; serves a functioning, if unequal economy 

• The taxpayer

• public good

Social mobility [Labaree]

• Prepare individuals to compete in an unequal economy and society 

• The consumer 

• private good: improve for yourself

• has become the dominant value in how parents approach their children’s education and driven education away from other goals toward this individual pursuit

Status

• Creates inequalities among social units, and these inequalities are institutionalized with the larger social system 

• Sociologists have argued that it is based on wealth, power, and prestige

• In modern society, education has arguably become a fourth basic dimension of status

Haller and Portes

educational and occupational attainment are not determined solely by ability or individual effort. Instead, attainment results from a process in which family socioeconomic status influences aspirations through parents, teachers, and peers, with education serving as the key pathway to later occupational success

Blau-Duncan model [Haller and Portes]

position at birth is transmitted to adult position (occupation) through educational attainment 

• higher-status parents help children achieve more education

• education improves occupational opportunities,

• educational attainment is one of the strongest predictors of later occupational status

Wisconsin model [Haller and Portes]

“what are the mediating processes by which parental status affects educational and occupation attainment?”

• Social-psychological factors, such as aspirations from the influence of “significant others”

• these individuals influence educational and occupational goals, which in turn affect attainment 

• Other important people in a child’s life than family can influence educational outcomes 

• Education can disrupt the link between parent and child occupation outcomes 

Collins

• Educational attainment as part of a status culture 

• findings do not support the idea that schools were democratic and meritocratic, or that they taught technical skills; education is instead a status culture

  • Education has become a new form of status due to competition over scarce resources (jobs in the labor market), leading to conflict for the scarce resource of education 

  • Credentialism: a degree is necessary for social mobility 

  • People are competing for education as a new form of status 

Functionalist theory

• The function of schooling is the maintenance of social order 

• Schools are built to feed people into labor market, but also socialize students into the dominant culture 

• Operate to the benefit of majority of citizens 

• Education sorts people into jobs that require specific skills

Conflict theory [Collins]

• Credentials do not reflect more expertise, but instead are used by dominant groups to secure advantages in the occupational and social structure 

• Education has become a tool to fight for positions in society that everyone wants to have 

• The expansion of schooling does not bring about meritocratic order

•  Schools function in the interest of dominant groups, and do not serve the interests of everyone

Why has educational expansion continued since the Collins article was written? [Collins]

• Post-war federal government investment in higher education 

• Expansion of seats by creating multiple tiers of education that have different levels of barriers to access 

• Functional theories: the technological advancement of the labor market has caused a need for more skills training through schooling

• Conflict theorist: as degrees get devalued through more people obtaining them, education expansion continues to “beat out” the people at lower levels

Parsons

•  Schools serve a positive function in society because they are necessary to maintain social order by socializing people into particular roles and preparing them to function in society

  • education should function to cater to the majority of citizens 

  • Schools are meritocratic 

• Functionalist perspective

  • Classroom as an agent of socialization

    • Commitments to broad values of society

      • Ex. meritocracy 

    • Commitments to a specific type of role within society

      • Specific skills 

  • Classroom as an agent of allocation/sorting

    • Correlations between parents and children 

  • School is different than the family 

    • When entering into school, you begin to be treated differently 

  • Independence is learned at home (argues this more than Dreeben) 

  • Schools are not all social mobility engines or all social reproduction engines 

  • Schools start to categorize students and treat them non-biologically 

Dreeben

• Schools socialize children into the norms and behaviors required for participation in modern public and occupational life

• the structure of schooling teaches four key norms that families alone cannot teach as effectively: independence, achievement, universalism, and specificity

Norms [Dreeben]

• Rules that people are expected to follow; rules of conduct that specify appropriate behavior in social situations

  • He refers to the four focal traits as norms because individuals accept them as legitimate states for governing their conduct 

• Independence, achievement, universalism, and specificity 

• Schools as key transitional institutions between the family and the public sphere of adult life 

Independence [Dreeben]

Doing things on your own, taking accountability for your actions

School structures: rules against cheating, individual assignments

Achievement [Dreeben]

• Perform tasks to the best of your ability, tasks/set of expectations will be evaluated in comparison to other people in your group 

• Achievement or lack thereof offer opportunity of self-confidence and self-consciousness

• Classrooms do not create collective achievement in the same way sports do

  • Which forms relationships differently

• learn to cope with success and failure

• School structures: grades, classroom work, extracurriculars

Universalism [Dreeben]

• Being judged according to general rules that apply equally to everyone

• Grouped into some category and then acknowledging the right of the school to treat you based on that category 

• Level of schooling strengthens this norm (high school is strongest)

• Helps develop a sense of equity 

• In each context, other identifiers besides what is relevant in the moment fall to the wayside

• School structures: grouped by grade/age, given same assignments

Specificity [Dreeben]

• People are judged and treated according to a limited set of relevant characteristics rather than the whole person

• Subcategories that emerge as a result of implicit behaviors, treating people specifically based on particular aspects of themselves

• Learn to activate particular part of ourselves and when is appropriate to activate them

• You don’t expect people to see your whole self, you’re only revealing certain parts of yourself and are treated accordingly (compartmentalization)

• School structures: evaluated only on academic performance, not personality

Rist

How teachers evaluate and classify students, plays a major role in determining success and failure

Teachers expect certain behaviors and achievements (based on social factors), treat students accordingly, and students gradually begin to perform in ways that match those expectations (shapes achievement, self-concept)

Through labeling, tracking, and differential treatment, schools may actively contribute to producing unequal outcomes

Labeling theory

• Attempts to identify a mechanism in the commonly used term/process “self-fulfilling prophecy”

• Within-school mechanism embedded in interactions 

• Ways this occurs may have disparate outcomes based on described characteristics of student 

Deviance [Rist]

• A norm violation 

  • Socially constructed

• A consequence of the application of rules and sanctions to a specific behavior or act 

• Primary to secondary deviant

  • If the deviance doesn’t define who you are, you are a primary deviant (often results in justification of deviance)

  • If deviance becomes part of identity, you are a secondary deviant 

How do schools generate labels for students? What are these labels and through what processes are they created? [Rist]

• Standardized testing (categories based on scale scores)

• “Gifted” programs 

• AIS vs. “Lab”

• Firsthand  vs. second hand information 

  • Electronic records as second-hand information

• ISS and specific rooms for detention 

• Special education programs 

Bischoff

Schools are civic institutions that help shape students' civic knowledge, political participation, tolerance, and democratic engagement

• Historically, schools prepared students to be citizens, but modern education policy has largely shifted attention toward academic achievement and workforce preparation

• Most research focuses on academic achievement and outcomes, showing schools affect economic outcomes but far less about how they shape citizens

• formal, informal, hidden curriculums

• Diversity improves civic learning for both privileged and disadvantaged students

• schools provide students with opportunities to practice democracy before they can fully participate in adult political life

• Differences in school context may contribute to long-term inequalities in civic participation and political influence

Formal curriculum [Bischoff]

civics, history, government, and social studies classes

Informal curriculum [Bischoff]

clubs, student government, debate teams, and service activities

Hidden curriculum [Bischoff]

the school's culture, peer relationships, diversity, and opportunities for participation

Schools should teach how to:

• Participate in a democratic society

• The rights and duties of citizens toward their political jurisdictions and fellow citizens 

• Civic education should help young people acquire and learn to use the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will prepare them to be competent and responsible citizens 

Moses and Rogers

inequitable and segregated schools weaken civic participation, democratic capacity, and social equality

• Resource, teacher, facility etc. inequalities undermine democratic equality because it limits who develops the skills and opportunities needed for civic participation

• Schools should prepare students to participate in democratic life, engage in civic and political action, etc.

• Diverse schools strengthen democracy

• Disadvantaged students often have less access to high-quality civic learning opportunities, making political participation and influence unequal across social groups

Why are schools a good place for civic education?

• Schools are more diverse than the family, provides socialization 

• But schools are reflective of the surrounding communities, maybe perpetuating inequalities

• Schools might be the only place for civic education under capitalism 

  • Parents are focused on working and keeping their families alive 

• On an individual level, the people that surround you are randomized not chosen, forcing students to interact and converse with each other 

• Education had always been political, given this intersection and embeddedness teaches students the skills, knowledge, etc

Bidwell

schools remain stable because of two interacting forces:

• Institutional pressures that push schools to maintain conventional structures and appear legitimate to the public

• Informal teacher networks that help teachers solve instructional problems without requiring major changes to formal school organization

Faculty workplace/teacher networks [Bidwell]

factors affecting the workplace that come through micro interactions

• Social control

• Professionalism 

• Relationships with other teachers

• Trust 

Teachers adapt to day-to-day challenges through informal collegial networks rather than through formal bureaucracy

• Share advice

• Solve instructional problems

• Exchange ideas

• Develop common teaching practices

Neo institutionalist theory [Bidwell]

Teaching is seen as procedurally unspecified, and in pursuit of vague and imprecise goals. Here, organizational boundaries are permeable, so interactions between organizations and their environments are an important explanatory force 

• schools adopt structures that society views as legitimate

Loose coupling [Bidwell]

• Procedures within an organization are not closely linked to goals and norms

  • what happens in classrooms (shaped by teacher networks) is only weakly connected to what administrators formally direct

Neo-institutional theory + loose coupling [Bidwell]

loose coupling allows schools to maintain institutional legitimacy without having to tightly control classroom instruction

• Because classrooms are loosely coupled to the administrative hierarchy, schools can adapt to change without altering the formal organizational structure

schools maintain institutionally approved structures for legitimacy while allowing classroom instruction to be adapted informally by teachers, resulting in organizational stability alongside local flexibility

institutionalized/rationalized myth [Bidwell]

• Schools are structured by factors external to the school environment. The “central office” must maintain legitimacy by adhering to characteristics of salient understandings of school qualities and a certain organizational form

  • School quality is defined by external actors 

  • In this theory, admin become more important because they are the liaisons to the external environment 

• Overtime, organizations become isomorphic (similar) to other institutional environments to gain legitimacy and ensure survival 

Teacher networks [Bidwell]

• help preserve the existing system because teachers solve local problems without needing major formal organizational reforms

• Informal adaptation acts as a buffer between changing conditions and formal structures

Diehl and Golann

• Schools do not simply receive external pressures and either comply with them or decouple from them. Rather, schools actively:

  • Filter external pressures before they enter the organization

  • Locally adapt those pressures once they reach teachers and administrators

  • Schools differ in how they filter and adapt pressures, so polices and reforms look different

• decoupling is no longer a sufficient explanation for school’s responses to external factors

• Schools are operating in increasingly complex environments and juggling multiple institutional logics

Logics [Diehl and Golann]

• overarching principle that the school is practicing

• values and assumptions about what the purpose of schooling is 

Filtering (first mechanism) [Diehl and Golann]

Schools do not absorb every aspect of a policy or reform, they adopt, modify and ignore elements of outside pressures

Local adaptation (second mechanism) [Diehl and Golann]

• After external pressures enter schools, teachers and administrators continue to reinterpret them according to local circumstances by modifying policies to fit their classrooms

• occurs through:

  • routines: repeated organizational practices

    • staff meetings, professional development activities

  • sensemaking: how people interpret and understand reforms, expectations, and events based on personal experiences

  • social networks: Teachers and administrators rely on relationships with colleagues to understand and implement policy

    • Informal advice networks, department groups, etc

Organizational heterogeneity [Diehl and Golann]

Two schools facing identical reforms may react differently because:

• They filter different aspects of the reform.

• Their routines differ.

• Their cultures differ.

• Their teacher networks differ.

• Their interpretations differ

Variation among schools reflects organizational processes

Bidwell + Diehl and Golann

Bidwell emphasized teacher networks, informal organization, limits of formal structure. Diehl and Golann extend this idea by showing how teacher networks, routines, and sensemaking mediate external institutional pressures.

Capital

something that is productive, making possible the achievement of certain ends that in its absence would not be possible

Social reproduction

the structures and activities that contribute to the maintenance of inequality (low mobility)

Social and cultural capital

theoretical concepts often used to help explain achievement in schooling, educational attainment, and occupational attainment 

Lareau

• Key question: how does cultural knowledge explain the transmission of inequality in families 

• Social class inequality is reproduced through cultural knowledge about how institutions work

  • Cultural knowledge- facts, information, skills, and familiarity with social processes

• Middle-class children and young adults possess greater knowledge of the "rules of the game," are more comfortable seeking help, and are more successful in getting institutions to accommodate their needs (social class shapes knowledge)

• small institutional interactions accumulate to shape outcomes

• Cultural guides are crucial for upward mobility

• Social class is reproducing social inequalities because it is reinforcing access or lack thereof to resources that contribute to outcomes 

Cultural capital

skills individuals inherit that can be translated into different forms of value as people move through different institutions

• How interactions between people are influenced by the standards that institutions use to evaluate them 

Cultural guides [Lareau]

people who intervene in kid’s lives to provide this culture information that helps them navigate institutions

How does Lareau show that cultural knowledge is consequential for social inequality?

• Often happens in small moments, like knowing when to withdraw from class, and how these decisions can snowball into bigger outcomes 

• Comparison between Tara and the other girl, institutional knowledge as a function of their parents 

• No social mobility in the sample 

Kao

• social capital should be understood as resources embedded in social relationships that help people achieve goals, including educational success

  • social capital comes from relationships between people not individual resources

    • three forms:

      • obligations and expectations (give individuals access to resources when needed)

      • information channels (can transmit information that helps children succeed academically)

      • social norms (influence academic behaviors)

        • Close knit nature (of a school) enhances these

• immigrant and minority communities often face disadvantages because they are more isolated from mainstream institutions (homogenous networks) but may compensate through strong internal networks

• social capital can be negative (reinforce anti-school attitudes, educational disengagement)

Kao + Lareau

Lareau emphasizes cultural capital and knowledge of institutional rules, while Kao emphasizes social capital and the resources available through family, community, and peer relationships

Bowles and Gintis

• Schools reproduce the inequalities and power relations of capitalist society

  • US schools are imbedded in a capitalist system that includes class conflict, schools reflect this dynamic

• Schooling structure corresponds to occupational structure (correspondence principle)

  • teach students how to function in a hierarchical capitalist economy rather than primarily teaching knowledge and critical thinking

  • educational system allocates students into different tracks and credentials, helping justify and reproduce an unequal class structure

• False meritocracy: test scores and IQs do not predict outcomes, socioeconomic status is more predictive 

  • schools convince people that economic inequality is fair because differences in income and status supposedly reflect differences in talent, effort, and achievement

• Education reforms often fail because the roots of inequality lie in the economic structure itself, not in schools alone

“Legitimation of inequality” [Bowles and Gintis]

• the education system generalizes consciousness that change in society is not really possible

• counters the psychological idea that the outcome of schooling is what the individual earned [achievement is earned] or the result of matching 

What is it about schooling that trains students for the occupational hierarchy? [Bowles and Gintis]

• Authority hierarchies at schools parallel occupational hierarchies 

• Opportunities for independent thinking are limited within the school setting 

• Motivation is the threat of failure rather than acquiring knowledge, fostering competition [setting up to be a good, productive worker rather than to seek self-fulfillment]

• Rewarding of obedience, conformity, persistence, punctuality, etc

Downey

• Challenges “the assumption” that advantaged schools that have more resources produce better education

• Main argument: schools do not increase educational inequality 

• A smaller part of life is spent in school than expected, outside of school influences play a larger role 

Downey evidence

• Achievement gaps (measured with math and reading scores) are present in the summer rather than during the school year (Summer learning)

  • What happens with kids learning when they’re not in school?

  • Inequality increases when children are not in school

  • Learning rates among children from different sociodemographic groups do not vary that much when they’re in school 

• Compares Canada to US and asserts that inequalities in early life are not as large there as in US (time before school is a factor)

• Denmark and social mobility to analyze opportunity structure 

  • There is a strong correlation in US between father and son income and occupation status, weaker link is present in other countries [schools are not doing much for mobility] 

• Gaps are established before kindergarten and slightly narrow rather than grow

Potential gaps in Downey argument

• There may be other gaps that are of interest (purpose of schooling)

  • Ex. civic education, ability to navigate institutions/cultural capital, technical skills

• Standardized testing accountability measures may skew data to show lower inequality because resources, even at disadvantaged schools, are allocated to math and reading 

  • Maybe less tested subjects like social studies would show more inequality 

• Making the argument that schools are neutral institutions does not necessarily mean they are actually that compensatory (which would be preferred) 

Bichoff and Rich

• neighborhoods are measured:

  • School neighborhood (proximate geographic space)

  • catchment area (enrollment boundaries)

  • aggregate residential neighborhoods of enrolled students (relevant in systems with school choice)

• neighborhoods and schools are deeply interconnected institutions that jointly shape children's educational opportunities and outcomes

  • Neighborhoods influence

    • Individual student outcomes (achievement, educational attainment, health, behavior, and future earnings), and

    • School conditions (student composition, resources, school culture, and opportunities available to students)

      • through school composition, resources, and culture

• Because neighborhood conditions influence education and life chances, inequality can be transmitted from parents to children

Neighborhood influence on schools as institutions [Bichoff and Rich]

• school composition: schools often mirror broader patterns of social inequality

  • racial segregation in housing contributes to racial segregation in schools, income segregation contributes to unequal schools, neighborhood demographic patterns shape school enrollment patterns

• Resources: Affluent neighborhoods often provide schools with both financial and social advantages

  • Funding often comes from local sources, income concentration of area matters 

  • Parents with more flexibility can be more involved in schools

  • Community organizations of area 

  • Familiarity/knowledge with institutions (ex. Cornell in Ithaca)

• Culture: demographics effect school priorities, values, curriculum, etc

Van de Werfhorst and Mijs

• Use test score datasets; educational inequality is strongly influenced by institutional design (two features):

  • Differentiation (tracking): how early and extensively students are separated into different educational tracks or school types.

  • Standardization (national curriculum, exams, resources): the degree to which curriculum, examinations, and educational expectations are nationally regulated

• Two types of inequality:

  • Inequality in achievement (differences in test scores)

  • Inequality of opportunity (how much social class, family background, or ethnicity affect achievement)

• Assess impacts of structure on four core tasks on schooling

  • offer/promote equality of opportunity

  • Efficiently select and sort students on their abilities and interests 

  • Provide skills relevant for the labor market 

    • matching

  • Provide commitment to and skills relevant for active citizenship 

Van de Werfhorst and Mijs conclusions

• School-level differentiation promotes inequality and decreases opportunity

  • Earlier the tracking happens, more impact on inequality and reproduction

  • Family background is a strong predictor of achievement

• Standardization promotes equality and efficiency

• The evidence rejects a trade-off between equality and efficiency in differentiated systems

  • Average performance does not increase in differential settings (higher inequality does not produce better results)

Jennings

• Jennings argues that mechanisms of inequality are reorganized via school choice because there is scarcity of seats in high-quality schools

  • Scarcity is both absolute and relative (status-based/reputations)

• The labor of providing a good education for children is shifted from the institution to individual families 

• Scarcity is addressed through mechanisms of rationing

Formal rationing [Jennings]

• rules for allocating limited seats (admissions criteria and geographic priorities)

• rationing agent: districts and schools

• determines who gets access to oversubscribed schools

• how it works: rule-based (algorithms) and formal processes (criteria shaped by principal discretion)

Spatial rationing [Jennings]

• geographic location of schools

• rationing agent: districts

• limits what schools are realistically accessible

• how it works: planning and placement— shaped by discretionary siting and priority

• *connects to Bischoff and neighborhoods

Navigational rationing [Jennings]

• complexity of process, administrative burden, and need for procedural fluency

• rationing agent: districts

• excludes those lacking time, information, or knowledge of the rules of the game

• how it works: processual and embodies— system complexity interacts with unequal time, knowledge, and administrative capacity

Perceptual rationing [Jennings]

• families’ interpretations of neighborhoods, schools, cues, peer demographics, and safety

• rationing agent: families

• self-selection in/out of schools due to internalized sense of inclusion/exclusion

• how it works: interpretive— operates through meaning-making, informed by lived experience and history

Symbolic rationing [Jennings]

• cultural signals about belonging, culture, and academic prestige

• rationing agent: schools

• funnels homogeneous students into same schools

• how it works: curated— shaped by schools’ discretionary choices about aesthetics, communication, branding, and competitive processes

• *connects to Tyson

Wells, Duran, and White

• Qualitative interviews with adults who attended desegregated schools

• Two broad arguments for remedies to segregated schools:

  • Structural inequality still exists: intergenerational effects of racist policies; past harms still manifest in present structural mechanisms; desegregation is fixing a past wrong 

  • Diversity rationale: there is value in diversity itself in educational environments

    • preparing people to live in a diverse society; people learn more from diverse perspectives; prejudice is diffused  

• graduates of diverse schools experience long-term personal, social, and professional benefits

What are some arguments in favor of ethnoracially integrated school environments? [Wells, Duran, and White]

• School is one of the only environments that can be integrated to promote diversity as a developmental opportunity

• Promote a mutual understanding of students (tolerance and diffusion of stereotypes)

• Preparing students for leadership roles in an increasingly diverse society 

• Resource argument: historically, segregated schools had worse resources (per pupil spending, teachers)

• Access to social and cultural capital through diverse networks 

What conditions arguably lead to positive impacts? [Wells, Duran, and White]

• Earlier exposure yields greater positive impacts

• Status of students is equal, engaging in activities with same goal, noncompetitive 

  • Deeper connections

Ewing

• Analyzes a set of school closures that were announced in 2013 in Chicago 

• selective school closures were a historical product of racially biased policies

• argues justifying school closures based on low enrollment is not race neutral 

  • enrollment declines were not natural or accidental. They were produced by decades of government policies that segregated Black residents, concentrated them into specific neighborhoods, and later displaced them through public housing demolition

Types of academic tracking

• “Streaming” – practice of separating students between types of schools (college-prep vs vocational)

• Course tracking – practice of separating students by ability on a subject-by-subject basis between classrooms (usually at the middle and high school levels)

• Ability grouping– practice of separating students by ability groups within classrooms (usually elementary level)

What are the main arguments for tracking? [Loveless]

• it provides a pathway for social mobility (in the case of equal access)

• a detracked model would suggest everyone had the same propensity for learning, which would pull the advanced students back and accelerate the lower ability kids, hurting both groups

• targeted interventions (rather than gen ed classes) might provide better education for students

• allows high achieving students to flourish and be challenged, keeping them interested in school

• tracking may be more suitable/efficient for school management 

• Loveless conclusion: We should do tracking, but maybe differently, and better

What are the main arguments against tracking? [Loveless]

• in practice, inequalities in student background emerge from tracking

• in lower tracked class, materials taught may be different, stunting their education

• lowered self-concept

Tyson

• Asking: Why do inequalities in advanced course-taking persist in an era of “free-choice” tracking?

• racial disparities in advanced high school classes result not from Black students rejecting academic achievement but from earlier tracking and gifted-placement systems that shape students' confidence, friendships, and sense of belonging, ultimately reproducing racial segregation within formally integrated schools

What does Tyson argue are the primary mechanisms that lead to underrepresentation in advanced coursework in diverse schools?

• Parent intervention, which requires institutional knowledge, in cases they felt they were wrongly assigned are disproportionately white and middle class 

• Confidence and feeling the work would be doable is traced to labeling that happened earlier (like gifted programs)

• how students receive advice from faculty 

• Instrumental purposes of courses; expectations for college motivate students to take advanced classes

• Making decision based on where students feel socially comfortable 

Mechanisms of segregated advanced course-taking [Tyson]

• self-protection/self-confidence

  • Getting good grade in what you feel you can handle 

• Labeling 

  • Early classifications affect confidence levels and expectations 

• Social belonging

  • Feeling of comfort from peers (having friends in the class), selecting into classes you feel socially comfortable

• Institutional constraint

  • When the options set is racially segregated, it is hard to go against the grain

Social class

• System of social stratification

• Sociologists typically measure social class in reference to family background

  • Income, wealth, and education – makes distinctions 

  • Hierarchical classifications: upper, middle, working class

• Parental educational attainment and occupational status (Calarco)

Calarco

• Research question: what role do children play in education and stratification? Or do they actively shape their own opportunities?

  • analyzes micro-level interactions to understand how children’s class background provide them with resources to be successful in the classroom

• Middle-class strategies of help-asking aligned with institution/teacher expectations, so they are rewarded and contribute to these students’ success

• Middle-class entitlement to help 

• Extends lareau’s theory of cultural capital as a mechanism of social inequality, specifically how it operates in schools 

• Considers the role of children as active agents of inequality

  • Social class producing unequal access to educational advantages 

• Social class provides “micro-interactional resources” children use to seek help

  • Help-seeking strategies when engaging with teachers

How do Calarco’s findings illustrate how social class contributes to educational stratification? What role do teachers play in this process? 

• Students’ social class background afforded them strategies to secure education opportunities, benefits, rewards and outcomes

  • middle -class students approached the teacher directly, requested clarification and checking of work

  • Working-class students tended to be more patient and rarely made assistance requests 

• Teachers’ expectations and response to proactive requests

• There was not a universally stated way of how students should approach asking for help, which middle-class students were able to leverage 

Calarco key takeaways

• Educational stratification arises from the advantages children secure for themselves

  • Unequal distribution of educational opportunities 

• Children actively participate in the reproduction of inequality

• Social class and cultural capital shape children’s strategies in obtaining educational advantages and opportunities 

Educational stratification

stratifying mechanism that unequally distribute access to resources that determine educational outcomes 

Social inequality

the uneven and unjust distribution of resources, opportunities, privileges, and punishments among individuals and groups in a society