Sociology of Education Exam 1

Data Collected in Pushout

Interviews and focus groups with girls, women, educators, and justice professionals, the majority of whom identified as Black

How does the focus of Pushout differ from previous literature on the school to prison pipeline?

• most discussions center around black boys and it is assumed black girls experiences are similar

• black girl criminalization is not only race but gender (sexualization)

• gendered pipeline: black girlhood is criminalized in different ways

Ghetto Schools as defined by Pushout

high poverty, low performing, over-policed schools in marginalized black communities that have

1. culture of surveillance

2. low expectations from teachers

3. lack of culturally relevant instruction

School Context (result of ghetto schools) in Pushout

black girls feel that they are problems to be contained, causing internalization of being a failure or resist by acting out, reinforcing stereotypes and pushing them out of school

adultification in pushout

perception that black girls are older, more knowledgeable, and less innocent than they actually are, resulting in less empathy, less protection, and more punishment, hence justidying harsher disciplinary actions

hypersexualization in pushout

• Black girls face disproportionate punishment for behaviors
  that are interpreted through racialized stereotypes of hypersexuality.
  • Dress codes often target them more harshly even when wearing the same
  clothing as white girls.
  • Behaviors such as dancing, joking, or flirting are treated as deviant rather
  than normal adolescent expression.
  • Instead of educating or protecting them, schools police their bodies,
  reinforcing historical control over Black femininity.

cultural disconncet in pushout

Many educators misinterpret Black girls’ communication styles as attitude,
aggression, or defiance (cultural misalignment)

trauma in pushout

Many girls carry trauma related to poverty, sexual abuse, family instability, or
community violence and may exhibit behaviors like withdrawal, defensiveness, or
conflict as a response =>
survival strategies

solutions to trauma influencing behavior in pushout

• Schools should adopt trauma-informed responses that recognize these behaviors as
coping mechanisms and provide support rather than punishment.
• Girls repeatedly say they respond better to teachers who genuinely care rather than
those who rely on strict control.
• Controlling discipline, driven by surveillance and punishment, mirrors the
criminal justice system and reinforces marginalization.
• Caring discipline, by contrast, builds relational trust.
• Morris frames this as a shift from authoritarian to restorative discipline.

pushout conclusions

Pushout refers to the way that education institutions actively contribute to
excluding or alienating Black girls, leading them out of educational spaces.
• Unlike “dropout,” which implies an individual-level failure or choice,
“pushout” highlights structural forces such as punitive discipline,
adultification, and cultural misunderstanding that push Black girls away from
school.
• Without intentional efforts to combat these norms, schools function as
institutions that reproduce racial and gender oppression.

school to prison pipeline

Polices and practices that push at-risk children
out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system.
• Increasing restriction on all sorts of behavioral transgressions, including
more mundane or commonplace behaviors.
• Using a theory that argues that general disorder leads to more serious
disorder and violence.
• Referral to criminal justice system, even for minor infractions

the discipline gap

Disciplinary actions that result in court referrals,
suspensions, and expulsions are disproportionately applied to students of
color.
• Black and Latino students are much more likely to experience punishment
than white or Asian students are for the same offense

history of school discipline

Historically, teachers were expected to assume the parental duties and responsibilities
called in loco parentis.

• In the 1960s, changing public attitudes, expanded individual rights , and social
movements led to traditional school discipline to come under scrutiny.
• Increasing crime rates in the 1980s and 1990s led to attitudes favoring stricter school
discipline policies.
• School shootings reinforced this trend by spurring concern for teacher and student
safety.
• Zero tolerance policies: Certain punishments are mandatory for designated offenses.
• Police and school resource officer introduction into schools.

two goals of discipline

Maintenance of order: The need to create a safe environment
conducive to learning.
Socialization: Schools help instruct values that turn children into
productive citizens. Discipline is a tool for teaching students socially
appropriate behaviors and attitudes

School discipline

a system of rules, monitoring, sanctions, and
rewards implemented by school personnel with the intent of shaping
student behavior.

difference in homework between teenagers now and in 1990s

twice

every grade level the amount of homework should

+10 minutes

there is ______ proof that homework helps children, leading to

insufficient, movement away from homework

value of homework

• Correlated with student achievement (especially for older students).
  • Improves study habits, self-discipline, and problem-solving skills

downsides of homework

• Linked to physical and emotional fatigue.
• Correlated with negative attitudes about learning.
• Limits leisure time for children.
• Leads to extra work for parents and other family members.
• Benefits those with the familial and financial resources for homework
supervision.

limitations for ELL learners 

• ELL courses fed into non-ELL remedial subject courses
• Once placed in remedial subjects, ELL students faced difficulty sustaining
academic motivation.
• Teacher and guidance counselors steered ELLs away from high track courses
• Parents and students lacked the knowledge to advocate for placement in
higher tracks.

English Language Learners

students whose difficulties in speaking,

reading, writing, or understanding English may limit their ability to achieve

in classrooms where English is the language of instruction

fastest growing k-12 population

ELL

outcomes of low tracks

• Students are more likely to drop out of school if they take lower track courses
  • Low track courses are more likely to emphasize self-discipline, respect, and
  basic literacy and math skills.
  • Low track teachers report developing distrusting relationships with their
  students.
  • Low track teachers report spending more time on classroom management

outcomes of high tracks

• High track courses are more likely to emphasize critical thinking,
problem solving, original ideas, and developing passion for the subjects.
• High track teachers report positive and trusting relationships with their
students.
• High track students have higher test scores, high school graduation
rates, and college attendance and graduation rates.

examples of hightracks 

• Talented and Gifted programs
• Advanced and honors sections of courses
• AP classes
• International Baccalaureate Program
• College credit in high school courses

examples of low tracks

• Remedial coursework
• Coursework that doesn’t meet the minimum for college admissio

Tracking

the practice of sorting students into groups for
instructional purposes, ostensibly according to their ability

tracking then vs now

used to be for specific career paths, but not based on academic achievement (white and asian tend to be on higher tracks)

standard testing and segregation

• parents use test scores as proxy for good schools

• lower income schools with pressure for high standard only teach to the test (only learn memorization instead of application)

educational triage

Teaching time is reduced with students who will easily
reach proficiency and with students who have almost no chance of reaching
proficiency levels on the assessments.

Criticisms of standardized testing

• Educational triage
  • Students in states with high school graduation exams were less likely to
  graduate and had lower SAT scores

• High-stakes tests are associated with an increase in dropouts (unwelcome)

• Debate about if testing accurately measures student learning.
  • Encourages teaching to the test, limiting innovative pedagogies
  and lessons outside of the assessment.
  • The pressure on school admin

• Highly correlated with factors outside of the school’s control, such
  as family income.

standardized testing

a form assessment in which the same set of
questions is administered in the same way and under relatively similar
conditions, with the intent of creating comparable results.
• These tests become “high-stakes” once consequences like teacher
performance and student graduation or promotion are attached to test
results.
• tool for school accountability.

State-level Legislative Dynamics in race in the curriculum

• Requiring neutrality on controversial issues.
• Banning teaching concepts that could induce discomfort or guilt based
on race or sex.
• Prohibiting teaching systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege in
core curricula

Federal Policy Dynamics in race

Executive Order 14190 ("Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12") (Jan 29,
2025):
• Prohibits teaching materials deemed anti-American, subversive, or
promotive of “gender ideology” or CRT.

"Dear Colleague" Letter from U.S. Dept. of Education (Feb 2025):
• Commands schools and colleges ending race-based preferences or DEI
programming or risk losing federal funding.
• Softened guidance clarifies that celebrations like Black History Month
and cultural heritage events are still permitted. It also reaffirms that
curriculum decisions rest with states/localities.

Critical Race Theory (CRT)

body of legal scholarship that tried to explain the political backlash and legal backlash to the civil rights movement, which
also became a broad approach and framework for thinking about race

what does CRT do

Critical Race Theory criticizes individual notions of prejudice and
discrimination versus structural racism, and replaces biological notions of
race with the idea that race is a social construction

Model Minority Myth

characterizes Asians and Asian Americans as a
group who have achieved a higher level of success than others through
some combination of innate talent and work ethic.

How should we understand Asian academic success?

• Faced different types of discrimination than other groups
• Successful outcomes different depending on ethnicity studied
• The role of culture in some Asian families

You Are Still Black:
Charlottesville’s Racial Divide

Opportunity gaps:
• Course prerequisites and teacher recommendations often act as gatekeepers
• Tracking systems channel students into different academic pathways early

Discipline disparities:
• Implicit bias and zero-tolerance policies disproportionately affect students of
color
• Persistent residential and school segregation:
• Attendance zones reproduce racial and class divisions (de facto segregation)

“You Are Still Black”:
Charlottesville’s Racial Divide data, sample, methodlogy

“You Are Still Black”:
Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Students statistics

• Charlottesville has one of the largest Black–white achievement gaps
nationally
• Black students are 3.5 grade levels behind white peers (vs 2 nationally)
• About 50% of Black students below grade level in reading, compared to
10% of white students

Indices of isolation

likelihood that a student of a given racial/ethnic
group attends school with peers of the same (or another) group.
• For the average student in racial group X, what share of their classmates are
also from racial group X?
• If the average Latino student attends a school that is 75% Latino, that
indicates high isolation.

measure of isolation is called

indices of isolation

measures of segregation is called

indices of uneveness

indice of uneveness

measure how evenly (or unevenly) groups of
students are spread across schools within a district.
• If we took a given racial/ethnic group and evenly distributed them
across schools, how different would the current distribution look?
• If Black students make up 30% of a district’s population but one school
has 70% Black students and another has only 5%, that’s a high level of
unevenness.
• Captures between-school comparisons that show whether schools are
racially balanced relative to the district as a whole.

history of segregation

• Tape v. Hurley 1885, California Supreme Court

• Plessy v. Ferguson 1896

• Mendez v Westminister 1947

• Brown v Board of Education 1954

• In 1955, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that desegregation must occur “with
  all deliberate speed.”
  • Desegregation policies were met with open defiance and violent
  confrontations.
  • Implementing desegregation required political intervention.
  • Desegregation efforts led to massive shifts in how education was
  organized:
  • Segregation academies

• 1960s–1980s: Court-ordered busing led to real gains in integration and
achievement gaps narrowed.
• 1990s onward: Many districts were released from desegregation oversight.
• Although de jure segregation was outlawed, de facto segregation lives on:

why contemporary segregation

Segregation academies:

Schools founded to enforce segregation until
the court ruled that segregation in private schools was also
unconstitutional in 1976

de facto segregation

A subtler process of segregation that is the result of other processes.

Brown v Board was passed

1954

Brown v Board

The Court ruled that “separate but equal” schools are unconstitutional.

Mendez v Westminister

(1947, California Supreme Court)
• The Court found that the practice of segregation of Mexican children in separate schools
that had been designated “schools for Mexicans” was unconstitutional.
• First federal court decision to strike down school segregation.
• For the first time, this case introduced social science evidence in a court that school
segregation harmed minority children.

Plessy v. Ferguson

(1896, US Supreme Court)
• Made it legal to separate people by race in public facilities.
• Even though the Court did not specifically use the phrase “separate but
equal,” the Court noted that there was no meaningful difference in
equality between the white and the black railway cars, creating the
doctrine later named “separate but equal.”

Tape v Hurley

1885, California Supreme Court

• The Court found the exclusion of a Chinese American student from
  public school based on her ancestry unlawful.
  • This case established that minority children were entitled to attend
  public school in California.
  • The state created separate schools for “Mongolian children” which set
  the stage for the establishment of segregated schools under the
  separate but equal doctrine.

achievement gap

is the disparity in academic performance between groups of
students

The Perverse Consequences of
the Easy A
• How does the trend of grade inflation reflect broader cultural and
institutional shifts in education?
• What are some of the outcomes of the shift toward grade inflation
that the article mentions?
• Is grade inflation a serious threat to higher education? What might be
some arguments in the affirmative and in the negative?

Reasons for the achievement gap vary widely, and include:

• State-wide factors
• District-wide factors
• School-wide factors
• Teacher and educator factors
• Classroom-based factors
• Family factors
• Individual student factors

economic capital

refers to material resources and money that families
can invest in their children’s education.

social capital

refers to the networks of relationships and connections
that families can draw on to support their children’s education

cultural capital

refers to knowledge, skills, habits, and cultural
dispositions that are valued by educational institutions.

hidden curriculum

refers to the unspoken lessons, norms, and values
that children learn in school outside of the official curriculum.

How could each of these types of capital could give middle-class
students an advantage over working-class students in elementary
school?

• hidden curriculum reflects social inequality

resistance theory

argues students from marginalized or working-class
backgrounds push back against the norms, values, and expectations of
schools that they perceive as serving dominant or middle-class culture.
• Students who do not share these norms may resist overtly (disruptive
behavior) or covertly (disengaging from schoolwork).
• In this way, working-class students reject education’s premise that school is
essential for success by redefining success in alternative ways and
dismissing the authority of teachers and schools.
• Thus, misbehavior or disengagement can be a rational response to
inequality.
• It shifts the focus from blaming students to examining how schools may
marginalize certain students.

bias in student teacher interactions

students are influenced by teacher reactions

Negotiating Opportunities research questions

• How does the middle-class secure unequal
  advantages in school?
  • How do children deal with challenges in the classroom?
  • How (and why) do those efforts vary along social class lines?
  • How do teachers respond to those efforts?
  • How (and why) do those response contribute to inequality?

Negotiating Opportunities Data and Methods

• Location: Maplewood, a public elementary school in a large,
Eastern city with socioeconomic diversity.
• Primary methodology: Ethnography (two years of 81 students)
• Secondary methodology:
• Interviews with a subset of students, parents, and teachers.
• Demographic survey

how did middle class parents coach their kids in Negotiating Opportunities

strategies of influence

strategies of influence in negotiating opportunities

• Teaching resourcefulness
• Teaching assertiveness
• Teaching consequence avoidance

working class parents coach their kids with

strategies of deference

strategy of deference in Negotiating Opportunities

• Teaching respect
• Teaching work ethic
• Teaching personal responsibility

What is the overarching research question of the book? What data does the author use to
answer that question?
2. Describe how middle-class families coach strategies of influence as compared to how working-
class families coach strategies of deference. What values do each approach emphasize?
3. Describe the impact that teachers’ inconsistent expectations within the curriculum and
classroom had on students, and how this varied by social class.
4. Describe the class-based differences that the author found in seeking assistance. What impact
do these differences have on academic achievement?
5. How did the children differ across classes with how they approached rules and sought
accommodations? What were the consequences of these approaches in the classroom?
6. Describe how the groups of children differed in terms of the sources of attention that they
received at school and the strategies they utilized to get that attention.
7. What does the author mean when she states that middle-class advantage in school is a
negotiated advantage?

Rewards versus Reprimands in Negotiating Opportunities

• Teachers are inconsistent with their expectations of student problem-
solving, leading students to rely on strategies taught 

• middle class: expect reward for questions 

• lower class: expect punishment for questions

Effects of Seeking Assistance Differences in Negotiating Opportunities

because middle class asked more questions and weren’t afraid to ask/push for help, they completed work more accurately and efficiently while working class lagged behind because they were afraid of speaking up when they didn’t understand

Middle vs Working Class Seeking Accomodations in Negotiating Opportunities

middle class sees rules as flexible and tries to get out of punishment while working class accepts

Attention Seeking in Negotiating Opportunities

Middle class sought attention overtly esp for talents whereas working class focused on getting connections through hard work and helpfulness

• teachers unintentioinally give more attention to middle class = reinforce inequality

response and ramifications in negotiating opportunities

though teachers want to be more fair but teachers fear pushback from middle class parents and admin
• Risk of losing the resources that they contributed to the school
• Risk of challenges to their professional authority
• Risk of personal reprisal

Negotiated advantage

means “that the middle class secures
advantages not just by complying with school expectations but also by
requesting support and resources in excess of what is fair or required
and by pressuring schools to grant those requests, even when they
might prefer to say no'“

Sociology of Education

The study of how public institutions and
individual experiences impact educational achievement and
outcomes

The focus of sociology of education can include any aspect of the
educational structure, including:

• Students
• Teachers and learning professionals
• Parents
• Policy makers
• Taxpayers

how to study education

• sample survey

• in-depth interview

• ethnography

• audit studies

• Longitudinal studies

• Cross-sectional studies

audit studies

type of field experiment primarily used to test for
discriminatory behavior or attitudes

Socialization

the process of learning and internalizing the values,
beliefs, and norms of our social group

Primary socialization

takes place within the family, with the school
acknowledged as the second most important source of socialization
for most children.

What skills do children learn in early educational socialization?

communication, cooperation, empathy, emotional intelligence, and conflict resolution

early childhood education helps you develop

• Cognitive and academic
• Social
• Emotional
• Physical

Activities that promote children’s learning that occur in the context of
everyday life, including

• Educationally-based playgroups
• Enrichment activities
• Educationally-based toys
• One-on-one educational instruction
• Educational media

Daycare is

group care programs that may have academic programs but moreso just to be watched (ages birth-3)

Preschool or Pre-kindergarten

program specifically preparing students for student success

pre-school: age 3

pre-k: age 4-5

there are _____ students in structured care programs, resulting in

more, less play time

unstructured play

linked to school readiness, social and
emotional skills, and higher academic performances

play-learning binary

view of learning in which play was
incompatible with learning, where children are either learning or
playing

Schoolification

increased focus on sedentary academic learning
in early childhood education

• What has led to schoolification?
• What kind of school environment did parents say that they
wanted in the The Play Learning Binary?

Effects of preschool

• k: higher test scores, better language development, better motor skills

•  Fourth graders: better attendance,e fewer behavior problems, increased chance of reading at grade level 

• Adults: less likely to get arrested, more likely to be employed 

• however

Cost of formal early child ed is

Expensive, less as older 

Pandemic on early childhood education 

price rise and more difficult bc lost third of workforce becuss of 

• Low wage 

• Difficult working conditions 

• Health worries 

• Staff needed to take care of own kids 

Low income and childhood ed

less likely to arms to formal education (90% of middle class go but < 2/3 Of kids in poverty

Less likely to read or exposed to educational and cultural opportunities

Behind peers in English and math

Head start and effects

Federal program providing early childhood education programs from birth to age 5 for very low income families 

36% eligible ages 3-5 have access to head start

Head start participants are 12% less likely to live in poverty as adults and 29% less likely to receive public assistance than similar adults

Why was head start started 

War on poverty