Education, Inequality and Social Class provides a comprehensive discussion of the empirical evidence for persistent inequality in educational attainment. It explores the most important theoretical perspectives that have been developed to understand class-based inequality and frame further research. With clear explanations of essential concepts, this book draws on empirical data from the UK and other countries to illustrate the nature and scale of inequalities according to social background, discussing the interactions of class-based inequalities with those according to race and gender. The book relates aspects of inequality to the features of educational systems, showing how policy choices impact on the life chances of children from different class backgrounds. The relationship between education and social mobility is also explored, using the concepts of social closure, positionality and social congestion. The book also provides detailed discussions of the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein, two important theorists whose contributions have generated thriving research traditions much used in contemporary educational research. Education, Inequality and Social Class will be essential reading for postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students engaged in the study of education, childhood studies and sociology. It will also be of great interest to academics, researchers and teachers in training.

This book examines the impact that parents and schools have on disadvantaged children who perform against the odds.

Contemporary public policy assumes that the achievement gap between black and white students could be closed if only schools would do a better job. According to Richard Rothstein, "Closing the gaps between lower-class and middle-class children requires social and economic reform as well as school improvement. Unfortunately, the trend is to shift most of the burden to schools, as if they alone can eradicate poverty and inequality." In this book, Rothstein points the way toward social and economic reforms that would give all children a more equal chance to succeed in school. This book features: a summary of numerous studies linking school achievement to health care quality, nutrition, childrearing styles, housing stability, parental economic security, and more ; aA look at erroneous and misleading data that underlie commonplace claims that some schools "beat the demographic odds and therefore any school can close the achievement gap if only it adopted proper practices." ; and an analysis of how the over-emphasis of standardized tests in federal law obscures the true achievement gap and makes narrowing it more difficult.

In many countries, concern about socio-economic inequalities in educational attainment has focused on inequalities in test scores and grades. The presumption has been that the best way to reduce inequalities in educational outcomes is to reduce inequalities in performance. But is this presumption correct? Determined to Succeed? is the first book to offer a comprehensive cross-national examination of the roles of performance and choice in generating inequalities in educational attainment. It combines in-depth studies by country specialists with chapters discussing more general empirical, methodological, and theoretical aspects of educational inequality. The aim is to investigate to what extent inequalities in educational attainment can be attributed to differences in academic performance between socio-economic groups, and to what extent they can be attributed to differences in the choices made by students from these groups. The contributors focus predominantly on inequalities related to parental class and parental education.

In this book Diane Reay, herself working-class-turned-Cambridge-professor, presents a 21st-century view of education and the working classes. Drawing on over 500 interviews, the book includes vivid stories from working-class children and young people. It looks at class identity, and the effects of wider economic and social class relationships on working-class educational experiences. The book reveals how we have ended up with an educational system that still educates the different social classes in fundamentally different ways and, vitally, what we can do to achieve a fairer system. Book jacket.

Class differences permeate the neighborhoods, classrooms, and workplaces where we lead our daily lives. But little is known about how class really works, and its importance is often downplayed or denied. In this important new volume, leading sociologists systematically examine how social class operates in the United States today. Social Class argues against the view that we are becoming a classless society. The authors show instead the decisive ways social class matters—from how long people live, to how they raise their children, to how they vote. The distinguished contributors to Social Class examine how class works in a variety of domains including politics, health, education, gender, and the family. Michael Hout shows that class membership remains an integral part of identity in the U.S.—in two large national surveys, over 97 percent of Americans, when prompted, identify themselves with a particular class. Dalton Conley identifies an intangible but crucial source of class difference that he calls the "opportunity horizon"—children form aspirations based on what they have seen is possible. The best predictor of earning a college degree isn't race, income, or even parental occupation—it is, rather, the level of education that one's parents achieved. Annette Lareau and Elliot Weininger find that parental involvement in the college application process, which significantly contributes to student success, is overwhelmingly a middle-class phenomenon. David Grusky and Kim Weeden introduce a new model for measuring inequality that allows researchers to assess not just the extent of inequality, but also whether it is taking on a more polarized, class-based form. John Goldthorpe and Michelle Jackson examine the academic careers of students in three social classes and find that poorly performing students from high-status families do much better in many instances than talented students from less-advantaged families. Erik Olin Wright critically assesses the emphasis on individual life chances in many studies of class and calls for a more structural conception of class. In an epilogue, journalists Ray Suarez, Janny Scott, and Roger Hodge reflect on the media's failure to report hardening class lines in the United States, even when images on the nightly news—such as those involving health, crime, or immigration—are profoundly shaped by issues of class. Until now, class scholarship has been highly specialized, with researchers working on only one part of a larger puzzle. Social Class gathers the most current research in one volume, and persuasively illustrates that class remains a powerful force in American society.

Class Rules challenges the popular myth that high schools are the “Great Equalizers.” In his groundbreaking study, Cookson demonstrates that adolescents undergo different class rites of passage depending on the social-class composition of the high school they attend. Drawing on stories of schools and individual students, the author shows that where a student goes to high school is a major influence on his or her social class trajectory. Class Rules is a penetrating, original examination of the role education plays in blocking upward mobility for many children. It offers a compelling vision of an equitable system of schools based on the full democratic rights of students. Book Features: Provides a fresh, dynamic way of understanding educational inequality and social reproduction.Offers a breakthrough social/psychological theory of how adolescents acquire class consciousness.Compares the cultures and curricula of five American high schools focusing on the class composition of their students. “This highly readable and original book illuminates why we don’t have open class warfare in our society, despite huge inequalities. Peter Cookson shows how schools reproduce classes through institutional practices that forge class-based consciousness. He also suggests how education might be changed.” —Caroline Hodges Persell, professor emerita of sociology, New York University “Cookson does a superb job of analyzing the powerful forces in our schools that reinforce the racial, ethnic, and social-class structures our nation hopes to overcome. Breaking out of one’s social class was always hard but may now be harder than in previous decades. Cookson reminds us of what high schools can be, the great equalizers, institutions for promoting America’s finest values.” —David Berliner, Regents’ professor emeritus, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University