social class in schools essay

Education and Social Class: Highlighting How the Educational System Perpetuates Social Inequality

• November 2019
• In book: The Social Psychology of Inequality (pp.139-152)

• Université Clermont-Auvergne

• Université de Poitiers

• Université Clermont Auvergne

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Inequality in Education — The Impact Of Social Class On Inequality In Education

Social Inequality in Education: The Role of Social Class

• Categories: Inequality in Education Social Class

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Published: Oct 2, 2020

Words: 864 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Effects of social stratification on education (essay)

Works cited.

• Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). Greenwood Press.
• Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. Basic Books.
• Collins, R. (1979). The credential society: An historical sociology of education and stratification. Academic Press.
• Correll, S. J. (2001). Gender and the career choice process: The role of biased self-assessments. American Journal of Sociology, 106(6), 1691-1730.
• Duncan, G. J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (Eds.). (1997). Consequences of growing up poor. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. University of California Press.
• Lee, J. C., & Zhou, M. (2015). The Asian American achievement paradox. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Reardon, S. F. (2011). The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations. In R. Murnane & G. Duncan (Eds.), Whither opportunity? Rising inequality, schools, and children's life chances (pp. 91-116). Russell Sage Foundation.
• Sirin, S. R. (2005). Socioeconomic status and academic achievement: A meta-analytic review of research. Review of Educational Research, 75(3), 417-453.
• Stanton-Salazar, R. D. (2011). A social capital framework for the study of institutional agents and their role in the empowerment of low-status students and youth. Youth & Society, 43(3), 1066-1109.

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Social Class and Education, Essay Example

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Introduction

Education inequality is a reality in the contemporary scenario. This is despite the developments and infrastructure advancements, which have been realized in the progress of the society. In the U.S., the scenario is not different with social classes influencing the access to education. Governments and other stakeholders are sentient on this actuality. This is evident with the presidential candidates in the U.S. tasked with explaining their positions concerning this reality. The media, including newspapers and other excerpts explored the position of the two candidates, the incumbent Obama and Romney since they represented different social classes.   Judging from this scenario, it is evident that social classes are influential in policy creation and consequently the society’s welfare (Biddle, 2001). When considering the aforementioned information, it is apparent educational inequalities are brought about by the differences in classes. This is mainly because the individuals from the higher and middle-income classes are economically empowered to access the education infrastructure to the highest levels.  This actuality influences the future generations of these classes, whereby it is easier for the privileged to maintain their status while the lower social classes find it difficult to enjoy similar opportunities. This can be attributed to the fact that the contemporary job market requires skilled individuals. This skill is provided by education hence limiting the lower social classes from progressing in the society. In order for the lower classes to be empowered, it is essential that education is accessible for the demographic. This will effectively break the cycle, which condemns the lower social classes to the same quality of life by empowering them to access education as their privileged peers (Kincheloe and Steinberg, 2007). Despite education being cited to be a fundamental right, the lower economic classes, as compared to the privileged classes in the society, do not equitably access education.

In the society, it is apparent that the distribution of resources is inequitable across population. This actuality results in the segmentation of the society according to their access to resources. In all societies, there are low, middle and high-income earners. These classes have been a characteristic of the society since the historical times. Despite this, in the historic times, prevalence of these classes was due to possession of physical resources including land and livestock among others. The advent of education provided a new avenue for the society to create opportunities for themselves.  This led to the rise of the middle class since physical resources were not the only avenue of wealth creation. The progress realized in the society, including mechanization and globalization have augmented the need for skilled individuals in the contemporary job market. This means that individuals require skills in order to be proficient in different sectors. For an individual to acquire the necessary skills and expertise required for employment, it is crucial to acquire a quality education to the highest level possible. This requirement has made it necessary for individuals to pursue knowledge to the highest possible level. With this consideration, the pursuit for education is not as straightforward as presented since socioeconomic factors are prominent in influencing its access. Education is an investment, and it requires resources. This means that education attracts costs, which have to be incurred by the society. This actuality locks out the lower economic classes since they do not have adequate resources to facilitate for their access to this fundamental requirement in the contemporary scenario.

As aforementioned, skills are essential for an individual to carve out opportunities in the competitive society. This is achievable through access of education. University and college education are considered the adequate levels for an individual to acquire the required skills for the contemporary job market. The college and university level education attract high tuition fees than the preceding education levels. The government and other stakeholders have tried to be proactive in addressing this limitation through numerous grants, scholarships and loans. Despite the availability of these solutions, they are not sufficient to cater for this socioeconomic class since the resources provided for this purpose are limited. This means that the financial burden of education is confined to individuals and their families (Min-zan Lu, 2012). This is a challenge because it is arduous for them to raise or even access the required resources for a quality education. This means that the individuals from the low economic classes are confined to limited progress since they cannot access the skills offered by educational institutions due to lack of resources. This class is also confined to the state apparatus provided for education services including community colleges, institutions, which cannot match the quality and resources, provided in the prestigious institutions. This results in individuals from the lower classes accessing insufficient education, which makes them less competitive in the job market. Their lack of resources impedes them to access the required standards of higher education hence compromises the opportunities that are available for them in the job market.

When considering the correlation between socioeconomic classes and education, it is apparent that lack of resources impedes access to quality education. When analyzing the situation, another correlation becomes overt. It is evident in the aforementioned information the social classes influence the access of education. Despite this, it is also valid to argue that education creates the low social classes. This is because the contemporary society is over reliant on education, as the marker for qualification for opportunities in the job market (Andersen and Taylor, 2011). This overreliance has resulted in the opportunities present in the society to be confined to the social classes, which access adequate resources. When individuals are unable to access education, their job opportunities are limited significantly. This results in the individuals having to be contented with jobs, which require unskilled labor. This means that they will be subjected to lower pay as compared to the educated demographic. The individuals have to work longer hours or even hold multiple jobs in order to satisfy their economic requirements (Reay, David and Ball, 2005). Most of the unskilled jobs do not attract benefits including health insurance among others. This means that they have to put additional efforts in order to access the benefits, which are provided for the educated class. If education is accessible to all, then the lower classes would be able to obtain jobs which are better paying and have the aforementioned benefits.

This actuality percolates into their lifestyle since they will have to live by the resources, which they can access, in this case, limited resources. This results in the uneducated individuals to have limited access to the resources and amenities in the society. This influences negatively the quality of their lives in the long term. Individuals from the lower classes are unable to access efficient services due to the social status. These services include health insurance among other benefits. They also live in neighborhoods, which are characterized by detrimental living conditions and vices including drugs and crime. All these detrimental effects are side effects of the inequity in the access of education in the society. This means that education needs to be made accessible to address the social problems, which affect the low social classes.

When considering the aforementioned premises, it is evident that education has been engrained into the contemporary society. Education influences an individual’s access to resources and consequently their social class. This means that the correlation between education and social class is inevitable. In order for the society to address the inequalities present in the education sector between the classes, it is imperative that all the stakeholders are proactive in ensuring that this is a reality. The government and the private sector alike have to reevaluate the structures and policies involved in the sector. For instance, education should be made affordable for the lower classes of society. It is evident from the policies of the incumbent U.S. president that the lower social classes are the responsibility of the state.

Some of the recommendations the government might consider concerning the issue of education and social classes is by subsidizing the sector further to ensure that education is conceivable for the lower classes.  The government might also improve the existing institutions serving the lower classes including community college to match the education quality provided in other prestigious institutions. This will enable the student from the lower income bracket families to acquire a competitive education hence match up the qualifications of other students. The private sector may also be encouraged to be accommodative of this demographic through the provision of programs tailored for these students. This will make certain that education is easily accessible to poor individuals hence facilitate future progress for the demographic.

Education is a fundamental right for individuals in the contemporary society. This means that it is imperative that governments ensure that the sector is not discriminative to social classes.  This is essential since it will empower individuals from the lower classes to access the opportunities presented in the contemporary scenario. This means that the disruption of the cyclic effect of poverty among the lower classes will be possible since individuals can access the resources present in the society. If education is available for all classes, then individuals will have the required skills to attain financial independence. The society should make certain that education is accessible in order to facilitate equitable distribution of resources in the society, hence empower individuals from the lower classes.

Education is an integral requirement in the contemporary scenario. This means that individuals have to attain education in order to access the resources available in the society. This has been necessitated by the progress witnessed by the society whereby various skills are required.  These skills are provided by the education offered by various institutions.  Despite this, individuals from the lower classes are impeded from accessing education since they do not have the sufficient resources. This means that the relevant stakeholders should make education accessible in order to ensure that the individuals in the society can access the available resources augmenting their lives. This is essential because it will facilitate the individuals from the low classes to acquire more resources consequently enhancing their lives than the current situation.

Andersen, M. L., & Taylor, H. F. (2011).  Sociology: The essentials . Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Biddle, B. J. (2001).  Social class, poverty, and education: Policy and practice . New York [u.a.: Routledge Falmer.

Kincheloe, J. L., & Steinberg, S. R. (2007).  Cutting class: Socioeconomic status and education . Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Pubs.

Min-zan Lu. (2012). From silence to words: writing as struggle.college English, vol 49, No 4. Pp 437-448.

Reay, D., David, M. E., & Ball, S. (2005).  Degrees of choice: Class, race, gender in higher education . Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books.

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How Social-Class Norms Impact Disparities in Education and Work

• Cross Cultural Differences
• Current Directions in Psychological Science
• Social Norms

The social-class disparities prevalent in US institutions of higher education and professional workplaces are influenced by many factors, including access to resources, individual differences in skill, and cultural barriers. In an article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science , Nicole Stephens and Andrea Dittmann of Northwestern University and Sarah Townsend of the University of Southern California analyze the impact of one such cultural barrier: norms.

“Different social-class contexts in the United States tend to reflect and foster different cultural models of self, or culture-specific understandings of what it means to be a good or appropriate person in the world,” the authors explain .

A cultural model of self influences how we view ourselves and how we interact with others, and there are two common models:

“The independent model of self assumes that a normatively appropriate person should influence the context, be separate from other people, and act freely on the basis of personal motives, goals, and preferences. In contrast, the interdependent model of self assumes that the normatively appropriate person should adjust to the conditions of the context, be connected to others, and respond to the needs of others,” the authors describe.

Although people from all social classes have access to both models, our experiences, including the social class context we come from, can put emphasis on one model over the other.

The authors explain that individuals from working-class contexts tend to have an interdependent model of self, as working together and addressing the needs of others helps mitigate the effects of having fewer financial resources, more environmental constraints, lower power and status, and fewer opportunities for control and choice. Those from middle-class contexts tend to have an independent model of self as a result of having access to more resources, fewer constraints, higher power and status, and more opportunities for control and choice.

Both models can be highly effective and functional, but organizations in the US tend to prioritize independent norms, placing value on using relationships for personal gain, promoting personal interests, and advocating for oneself. This can create a cultural mismatch for individuals from a working-class context, who may be less likely to view relationships in this way.

The authors discuss some important challenges of this cultural mismatch, including gaining access to opportunities. For example, one study found that even the highest achieving students from working-class contexts are unlikely to apply to elite schools, in part because they don’t want to separate from their family and community. Another study found that employees from working-class contexts are less likely to pursue organizational power if it requires independent behaviors, such as using connections for personal gain.

Additionally, institutional decision makers are less likely to view an employee positively or admit a student if they diverge from the institution’s norms. People tend to rate job applicants with independent skills as more competent, and are more likely to hire them relative to those with interdependent skills.

And cultural mismatch can have consequences for individuals’ performance within an institution. People from working-class contexts can experience more discomfort in educational and professional environments that have an independent culture. They may be less likely to perform to their potential as a result, leading to less favorable evaluations from educators and managers. For example, students from working-class contexts who attend universities that advertise having an independent culture report having more difficulty completing tasks, higher stress, and lower performance than similar students who are at universities that communicate an interdependent culture.

Stephens, Townsend, and Dittman conclude that institutions organized by middle-class norms can reduce opportunities for those from working-class contexts who have an interdependent model of self. They recommend that cultural mismatch be reduced by integrating diverse norms into an institution’s culture, such as recognizing the advantage of collaboration and teamwork, thereby creating a setting in which a larger range of students or employees can succeed.

Stephens, N. M., Townsend, S. S., & Dittman, A. G. (2018). Social-class disparities in higher education and professional workplaces: The role of cultural mismatch. Current Directions in Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0963721418806506

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Book | Education

Class and Schools : Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black–White Achievement Gap

Book • By Richard Rothstein • 2004

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Table of Contents | Prefaces | Introduction | About the author  |  Press release  |  Purchase this book

Table of contents

Prefaces Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute Arthur E. Levine, Teachers College

Introduction

Chapter 1: Social class, student achievement, and the black_white achievement gap The legacy of the Coleman report Some common misunderstandings about the gap Genetic influences Social class differences in childrearing Cultural influences on achievement, and black underachievement Health differences and school performance Housing and student mobility Social class differences between blacks and whites with similar incomes Does culture or social class explain the black_white achievement gap? Summer and after-school learning

Chapter 2: Schools that ‘beat the demographic odds’ The success of some poor children doesn’t mean that poverty doesn’t matter Dr. William Sanders and the Tennessee value-added assessment system The Heritage Foundation’s ‘no excuses’ schools The Education Trust’s ‘high-flying’ schools ’90/90/90′ schools, and Boston’s Mather School Pentagon schools Rafe Esquith, KIPP, and affirmative action programs like AVID

Chapter 3: Standardized testing and cognitive skills Standardized tests’ imperfect description of the gap Defining proficiency Alignment of tests, standards, and instruction The inaccuracy of tests that hold schools accountable for closing the gap

Chapter 4: The social class gap in non-cognitive skills The goals of education, including non-cognitive goals The anti-social score gap Affirmative action’s evidence of leadership: Bowen-Bok and the ‘four percenters’ Persistence in school, self-confidence, and adult earnings Complementing school curricula with civil rights enforcement Testing integrity, personality, and employability Civic and democratic participation Perry Preschool, Head Start, and Project STAR Comparing school and social reform to improve cognitive and non-cognitive skills

Chapter 5: Reforms that could help narrow the gap School integration, and Sen. Moynihan’s call for making choices Income inequality Stable housing School-community clinics Early childhood education After-school programs Summer programs The dangers of false expectations, and adequacy suits Teacher morale

Appendix. What employers say about graduates Endnotes Bibliography Acknowledgments

In this book, Richard Rothstein asks us to view the black-white and low- to middle-income achievement gaps with a wider lens. His revealing and persuasive analysis of how social class shapes learning outcomes forces us to look at the differences in learning styles and readiness across students as they enter school for the first time. Further, he prods us to consider the influence of income, health, safety and other gaps affecting students as they proceed through school. Even the racial and income gaps facing adults play a role, particularly as students look to their elders for signs of a payoff to education and sometimes find the evidence lacking. Consequently, according to Rothstein, addressing the achievement gap requires no less than a significant transformation of social and labor policy along with extensive school reform.

Such an analysis provides little room for easy answers and leaves few institutions off the hook. A few inspiring, dedicated teachers will not do the trick. Nor will higher expectations, in isolation, yield big payoffs for those left behind. In fact, school reform itself must be supplemented by a comprehensive compensatory program in the early years of school, along with after-school, summer, and pre-kindergarten programs. Holding schools accountable may be part of the answer, but what schools can do, even when they are at their best, will solve just part of the problem.

One can hope and expect that Rothstein’s analysis will catalyze a broader discussion of how to enhance learning in our society and, even more hopefully, inspire a broader commitment to addressing the gross inequalities that pervade American life. One can also hope that researchers will pursue empirical examination of many of Rothstein’s conjectures so that our understanding of education and the learning process deepens further.

The Economic Policy Institute is proud of its long association with Richard Rothstein, who has been an EPI research associate for over a dozen years, and pleased to publish this pathbreaking work along with Teachers College at Columbia University.

— Lawrence Mishel President, Economic Policy Institute

Two important things happened at Teachers College in 2004. First, the college completed a two-year strategic planning exercise and determined that we would focus our resources — people, programs, and dollars — on what we believed to be the most urgent issue facing education — educational inequity, which is popularly called “the achievement gap” — the chasm in access, expectation, and outcomes in education between low-income and high-income populations; whites/Asians and blacks/Hispanics; urban and suburban residents, etc.

We are convinced this problem is to education the equivalent of AIDS or cancer in health care. It is a scourge that robs children of their futures. Today’s information economy demands more education and higher levels of skills and knowledge for employment than ever before in history. Children on the lower end of the achievement gap without adequate skills, knowledge, and education have little chance for economic well-being in this country. When a quality education is denied to children at birth because of their parents’ skin color or income, it is not only bad social policy, it is immoral.

Teachers College chose to focus on educational equity as an affirmation of our historic mission of serving urban and disadvantaged populations. We believed, too, that our faculty, embracing three major fields — health, psychology, and education — had the capacity to study the issue comprehensively because it involves not only schools, but also families, communities, and social services such as health care.

The second important happening is that Richard Rothstein, an eminent scholar and former education columnist for The New York Times, came to Teachers College as the Sachs Lecturer. He gave three extraordinary lectures on the achievement gap. Rich with data, they comprehensively outlined the causes of the gap, identified the fallacies and misperceptions regarding the gap, redefined the meaning of the achievement gap, and offered proposals to narrow the gap. The lectures were mesmerizing, drawing a crowd even during a blizzard. They became the talk of the college, providing content not only for classes, but also for sidebar conversations at meetings on administrative matters and lunch discussions around tables in the cafeteria.

Given TC’s new focus, we asked Richard Rothstein if we could publish an extended version of his lectures. We thought his work both groundbreaking and fundamental to understanding educational equity. Accordingly, we wanted it to be our inaugural publication on the subject.

Four things make Richard Rothstein’s book unique.

First, recent years have brought an avalanche of publications on the achievement gap, characterized much too often by simplistic sound bites and ideological blinders. In contrast, Richard Rothstein’s book, drawing on a wealth of previous research, provides the most intelligent, compelling, and comprehensive analysis of the causes of the achievement gap I have ever read. He demonstrates that the problem cannot be attributed simply to variations in the quality of the schools attended by children of different races and economic classes. He shows that schools alone cannot provide a remedy. Along the way, the author presents evidence debunking the popular myth that there are super-schools capable of eliminating the gap. Presenting study after study, Rothstein highlights the far greater impact of health care, nutrition, parents, home, and community.

The author makes a second invaluable contribution in this volume. He enlarges upon the traditional conception of the achievement gap, which has almost universally focused on disparities in cognitive or academic achievement. Rothstein makes the case that non-cognitive outcomes — attitudes and behaviors — must be incorporated as well. He presents data to show both that these affective outcomes are important to employers, and that an achievement gap exists in this area as well.

Third, Richard Rothstein makes a series of policy recommendations on how to narrow the gap, focusing on education, health, housing, and income differentials. He proposes earned income tax credits, policies to stabilize family housing, school-community health clinics, early childhood education, after-school programs, and summer programs.

Fourth, based on his recommendations, the author does something very unusual. He matches his ideas with dollars, determining the cost of significantly reducing the achievement gap.

In sum, Richard Rothstein has written a unique and powerful volume that needs to be read by scholars, policy makers, and practitioners who have the capacity to shape tomorrow.

I am enormously grateful to Larry Mishel and the Economic Policy Institute for making this volume possible. He joined the college in publishing this book. He produced the volume in only a few months, warp speed in academic publishing, and disseminated it to the leading policy makers and practitioners in this country.

— Arthur E. Levine President, Teachers College, Columbia University

The 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s school desegregation order has intensified public awareness of the persistent gap in academic achievement between black and white students. The black-white gap is partly the difference between the achievement of all lower-class and middle-class students, but there is an additional gap between black and white students even when the blacks and whites come from families with similar incomes.

The American public and its political leaders, along with professional educators, have frequently vowed to close these gaps. Americans believe in the ideal of equal opportunity and also believe that the best way to ensure that opportunity is to enable all children, regardless of their parents’ stations, to leave school with skills that position them to compete fairly and productively in the nation’s democratic governance and occupational structure. The fact that children’s skills can so clearly be predicted by their race and family economic status is a direct challenge to our democratic ideals.

Policy makers almost universally conclude that these existing and persistent achievement gaps must be the result of wrongly designed school policies — either expectations that are too low, teachers who are insufficiently qualified, curricula that are badly designed, classes that are too large, school climates that are too undisciplined, leadership that is too unfocused, or a combination of these.

Americans have come to the conclusion that the achievement gap is the fault of “failing schools” because it makes no common sense that it could be otherwise. After all, how much money a family has, or the color of a child’s skin, should not influence how well that child learns to read. If teachers know how to teach reading, or math, or any other subject, and if schools emphasize the importance of these tasks and permit no distractions, children should be able to learn these subjects whatever their family income or skin color.

This common-sense perspective, however, is misleading and dangerous. It ignores how social class characteristics in a stratified society like ours may actually influence learning in school. It confuses social class, a concept that Americans have historically been loath to consider, with two of its characteristics, income and, in the United States, race. For it is true that low income and skin color themselves don’t influence academic achievement, but the collection of characteristics that define social class differences inevitably influences that achievement.

Recognizing social class and its impact on learning

This book tries to explain how social class differences are likely to affect the academic performance of children. For example, parents of different social classes often have different styles of childrearing, different ways of disciplining their children, different ways of communicating expectations, and even different ways of reading to their children. These differences do not express themselves consistently or in the case of every family; rather, they influence the average tendencies of families from different social classes.

That there would be personality and childrearing differences, on average, between families in different social classes makes sense when you think about it: if upper-middle-class parents have jobs where they are expected to collaborate with fellow employees, create new solutions to problems, or wonder how to improve their contributions, they are more likely to talk to their children in ways that differ from the ways of lower-class parents whose own jobs simply require them to follow instructions without question. Children who are raised by parents who are professionals will, on average, have more inquisitive attitudes toward the material presented by their teachers than will children who are raised by working-class parents. As a result, no matter how competent the tea

cher, the academic achievement of lower-class children will, on average, almost inevitably be less than that of middle-class children. The probability of this reduced achievement increases as the characteristics of lower-social-class families accumulate.

Many social and economic manifestations of social class also have important implications for learning. Health differences are among them. Lower-class children, on average, have poorer vision than middle-class children, partly because of prenatal conditions, partly because of how their eyes are trained as infants. They have poorer oral hygiene, more lead poisoning, more asthma, poorer nutrition, less adequate pediatric care, more exposure to smoke, and a host of other problems. As will be discussed in this book, each of these well-documented social class differences is likely to have a palpable effect on academic achievement, and, combined, the influence of all of these differences is probably huge.

The growing unaffordability of adequate housing for low-income families is another social class characteristic that has a demonstrable effect on average achievement. Children whose families have difficulty finding stable housing are more likely to be mobile, and student mobility is an important cause of low student achievement. It is hard to imagine how teachers, no matter how well trained, could be as effective for children who move in and out of their classrooms as teachers can be for children whose attendance is regular. Differences in wealth between parents of different social classes are also likely to be important determinants of student achievement, but these differences are usually overlooked because most analysts focus only on annual income to indicate disadvantage. This practice makes it hard to understand, for example, why black students, on average, score lower than white students whose family incomes are the same. It is easier to understand this pattern when we recognize that children can have similar family incomes but be ranked differently in the social class structure, even in economic terms: black families with low income in any year are likely to have been poor for longer than white families with similar income in that year. White families are likely to own far more assets that support their children’s achievement than are black families at the same current income level.

Throughout this book, the term “lower class” is used to describe the families of children whose achievement will, on average, be predictably lower than the achievement of middle-class children. American sociologists once were comfortable with this term, but it has fallen out of fashion. Instead we tend to use euphemisms like “disadvantaged” students, “at-risk” students, “inner-city” students, or students of “low-socioeconomic status.” None of these terms, however, capture the central characteristic of lower-class families: a collection of occupational, psychological, personality, health, and economic traits that interact, predicting performance not only in schools but in other institutions as well that, on average, differs from the performance of families from higher social classes.

The critique in this book tries to show that much of the difference between the average performance of black and white children can probably be traced to differences in their social class characteristics. But there are also cultural characteristics that likely contribute a bit to the black-white achievement gap. These cultural characteristics may have identifiable origins in social and economic conditions — for example, black students may value education less than white students because a discriminatory labor market has not historically rewarded black workers for their education — but values can persist independently and outlast the economic circumstances that gave rise to them.

One of the bars to our understanding of the achievement gap is that most Americans, even well-educated ones, are inexpert in discussions of statistical distributions. The achievement gap is a phenomenon of averages, a difference between the average achievement of lower-class children and the average achievement of middle-class children. In human affairs, every average characteristic is a composite of many widely disparate characteristics. For example, we know that lead poisoning has a demonstrable effect on young children’s I.Q. scores. Children with high exposure to lead, from fumes or from ingesting paint or dust, have I.Q. scores, on average, that are several points lower than the I.Q. scores of children who are not so exposed. But this does not mean that every child with lead poisoning has a lower I.Q. Some children with high lead levels in their blood have higher I.Q. scores than typical children with no lead exposure. When researchers say that lead poisoning seems to affect academic performance, they do not mean that every lead-exposed child performs more poorly. But the high performance of a few lead-exposed children does not disprove the conclusion that lead exposure is likely to harm academic achievement.

This reasoning applies to each of the social class characteristics that are discussed in this book as well as to the many others that, for lack of space or the author’s ignorance, are not discussed. In each case, social class differences in social or economic circumstance likely cause differences in the average academic performance of children from different social classes, but, in each case, some children with lower-class characteristics perform better than typical middle-class children.

Good teachers, high expectations, standards, accountability, and inspiration are not enough

As is argued in this book, the influence of social class characteristics is probably so powerful that schools cannot overcome it, no matter how well trained are their teachers and no matter how well designed are their instructional programs and climates. But saying that a social class achievement gap should be expected is not to make a logical statement. The fact that social class differences are associated with, and probably cause, a big gap in academic performance does not mean that, in theory, excellent schools could not offset these differences. Indeed, there are many claims today, made by policy makers and educators, that higher standards, better teachers, more accountability, better discipline, or other effective practices can close the achievement gap.

The most prominent of these claims has been made by a conservative policy institute (the Heritage Foundation), by a liberal advocacy group (the Education Trust), by economists and statisticians who claim to have shown that better teachers do in fact close the gap, by prominent educators, and by social critics. Many (although not all) of the instructional practices promoted by these commentators are well designed, and these practices probably do succeed in delivering better educations to some lower-class children. But a careful examination of each claim that a particular school or practice has closed the race or social class achievement gap shows that the claim is unfounded.

In some cases, the claim fails because it rests on the misinterpretation of test scores; in other cases, the claim fails because the successful schools identified have selective student bodies. Remember that the achievement gap is a phenomenon of averages — it compares the average achievement of lower- and middle-class students. In both social classes, some students perform well above or below the average performance of their social class peers. If schools can select (or attract) a disproportionate share of lower-class students whose performance is above average for their social class, those schools can appear to be quite successful. Many of them are excellent schools and should be commended. But their successes provide no evidence that their instructional approaches would close the achievement gap for students who are average for their social class groups.

The limitations of the current testing regime

Whether efforts to close the social class achievement gap are in-school or socioeconomic reforms, it is difficult to know precisely how much any intervention will narrow the gap. We can’t estimate the effect of various policies partly because we don’t really know how big the achievement gap is overall, or how big it is in particular schools or school systems.

This lack of knowledge about the merits of any particular intervention will be surprising to many readers because so much attention is devoted these days to standardized test scores. It has been widely reported that, on average, if white students typically score at around the 50th percentile of achievement on a standardized math or reading test, black students typically score at around the 23rd percentile. (In more technical statistical terms, black students score, on average, between 0.5 and 1.0 standard deviations below white students.)

But contrary to conventional belief, this may not be a good measure of the gap. Because of the high stakes attached to standardized tests in recent years, schools and teachers are under enormous pressure to raise students’ test scores. The more pressure there has been, the less reliable these scores have become. Partly, the tests themselves don’t really measure the gap in the achievement of high standards we expect from students because high standards (for example, the production of good writing and the development of research skills and analysis) are expensive to test, and public officials are reluctant to spend the money. Instead, schools use inexpensive standardized tests that mostly, though not entirely, assess more basic skills. Gaps that show up on tests of basic skills may be quite different from the gaps that would show up on tests of higher standards of learning. And it is not the case that a hierarchy of skills are gained sequentially by students. Truly narrowing the achievement gap would not require children to learn “the basics” first. Lower-class children cannot produce typical middle-class academic achievement unless they learn basic and more advanced skills simultaneously, with each reinforcing the other. This is, in fact, how middle-class children who come to school ready to learn acquire both basic and advanced skills.

The high stakes recently attached to standardized tests have given teachers incentives to revise the priorities of their instruction, especially for lower-class children, so that they devote greater time to drill on basic skills and less time to other, equally important (but untested) learning areas in which achievement gaps also appear. In a drive to raise test scores in math and reading, the curriculum has moved away not only from more advanced mathematical and literary skills, but from social studies, literature, art, music, physical education, and other important topics where test scores do not result in judgments of school quality. We don’t know how large the race or social class achievement gaps are in these subjects, but there is no reason to believe that gaps in one domain are the same as the gaps in others, or that the relationships between gaps in different domains are consistent at different ages and on different tests. For example, education researchers normally expect that gaps in reading will be greater than gaps in math, probably because social class differences in parental support play a bigger role for reading than for math. Parents typically read to their very young children, and middle-class parents do so more and in more intellectually stimulating ways, but few parents do math problems with their young children. Yet, on at least one test of entering kindergartners, race and social class gaps in math exceed those in reading.

Appreciating the importance of non-cognitive skills

We also don’t know how large are the social class gaps in non-cognitive skills — character traits like perseverance, self-confidence, self-discipline, punctuality, communication skills, social responsibility, and the ability to work with others and resolve conflicts. These are important goals of public education; in some respects, they may be more important than academic outcomes.

Employers, for example, consistently report that workers have more serious shortcomings in these non-cognitive areas than in academic proficiency. Econometric studies show that non-cognitive skills are a stronger predictor of future earnings than are test scores. In public opinion surveys, Americans consistently say they want schools to produce good citizens and socially responsible adults first, and high academic proficiency second. Yet we do a poor job, actually no job at all, in assessing whether schools are generating such non-cognitive outcomes. And so we also do a poor job of assessing whether schools are successfully narrowing the social class gap in these traits, or whether social and economic reform here, too, would be necessary to narrow these gaps.

There is some evidence that the non-cognitive social class gaps should be a cause for concern. For very young children, measures of anti-social behavior mirror the academic test score gaps. Children of lower social classes exhibit more anti-social behavior than children of higher social classes, both in early childhood and in adolescence. It would be reasonable to expect that the same social and economic inequalities that likely produce academic test score gaps produce differences in non-cognitive traits as well.

In some areas, however, it seems that non-cognitive gaps may be smaller than cognitive ones. In particular, analyses of some higher education affirmative action programs find that, when minority students with lower test scores than white students are admitted to colleges, the lower-scoring minority students may exhibit more leadership, devote more serious attention to their studies, and go on to make greater community contributions. This evidence reinforces the importance of measuring such non-cognitive student characteristics, something that few elementary or secondary schools attempt. Until we begin to measure these traits, we will have no insight into how great are the non-cognitive gaps between lower- and middle-class students.

Moving forward

Three tracks should be pursued vigorously and simultaneously if we are to make significant progress in narrowing the achievement gap. First is school improvement efforts that raise the quality of instruction in elementary and secondary schools. Second is expanding the definition of schooling to include crucial out-of-school hours in which families and communities now are the sole influences. This means implementing comprehensive early childhood, after-school, and summer programs. And third are social and economic policies that enable children to attend school more equally ready to learn. These policies include health services for lower-class children and their families, stable housing for working families with children, and the narrowing of growing income inequalities in American society.

Many of the curricular and school organizational reforms promoted by education critics have merit and should be intensified. Repairing and upgrading the scandalously decrepit school facilities that serve some lower-class children, raising salaries to permit the recruitment of more qualified teachers for lower-class children, reducing class sizes for lower-class children (particularly in the early grades), insisting on higher academic standards that emphasize creativity and reasoning as well as basic skills, holding schools accountable for fairly measured performance, having a well-focused and disciplined school climate, doing more to encourage lower-class children to intensify their own ambitions — all of these policies, and others, can play a role in narrowing the achievement gap. These reforms are extensively covered in other books and in public discussions of education and are not dwelt upon in this book. Instead, the focus here is the greater importance of reforming social and economic institutions if we truly want children to emerge from school with equal potential.

Readers should not misinterpret this emphasis as implying that better schools are not important, or that school improvement will not make a contribution to narrowing the achievement gap. Better school practices can probably narrow the gap. School reform, however, is not enough. In seeking to close the achievement gap for low-income and minority students, policy makers focus inordinate attention on the improvement of instruction because they apparently believe that social class differences are immutable and that only schools can improve the destinies of lower-class children.

This is a peculiarly American belief — that schools can be virtually the only instrument of social reform — but it is not based on evidence about the relative effectiveness of economic, social, and educational improvement efforts. While many social class characteristics are impervious to short-term change, many can be easily affected by public policies that narrow the social and economic gaps between lower- and middle-class children. These policies can probably have a more powerful impact on student achievement (and, in some cases, at less cost) than an exclusive focus on school reform, but we cannot say so for sure because social scientists and educators have devoted no effort to studying the relative costs and benefits of non-school and school reforms. For example, some data presented in this book suggest that establishing an optometric clinic in a school to improve the vision of low-income children would probably have a bigger impact on their test scores than spending the same money on instructional improvement. We can’t be certain if this is the case, however, because there have been no experiments to test the relative benefits of these alternative strategies.

Proposals to increase the access of lower-class families to stable housing should also be evaluated for their educational impact, as should proposals to improve all facets of the health of lower-class children, not their vision alone.

Incomes have become more unequally distributed in the United States in the last generation, and this inequality contributes to the academic achievement gap. Proposals for a higher minimum wage or earned income tax credit, designed to offset some of this inequality, should be considered educational policies as well as economic ones, for they would likely result in higher academic performance from children whose families are more secure.

Although conventional opinion is that “failing” schools contribute mightily to the achievement gap, evidence indicates that schools already do a great deal to combat it. Most of the social class difference in average academic potential exists by the time children are three years old. This difference is exacerbated during the years that children spend in school, but during these years the growth in the gap occurs mostly in the after-school hours and during the summertime, when children are not actually in classrooms.

So in addition to school improvement and broader reforms to narrow the social and economic inequalities that produce gaps in student achievement, investments should also be made to expand the definition of schooling to cover those crucial out-of-school hours. Because the gap is already huge at three years of age, the most important focus of this investment should probably be early childhood programs. The quality of these programs is as important as the existence of the programs themselves. To narrow the gap, early childhood care, beginning for infants and toddlers, should be provided by adults who can provide the kind of intellectual environment that is typically experienced by middle-class infants and toddlers. This goal probably requires professional care givers and low child-adult ratios.

Providing after-school and summer experiences to lower-class children that are similar to those middle-class children take for granted would also likely be an essential part of narrowing the achievement gap. But these experiences can’t comprise just after-school or summer remedial programs where lower-class children get added drill in math and reading. Certainly, remedial instruction should be part of an adequate after-school and summer program, but only a part. The advantage that middle-class children gain after school and in the summer likely comes mostly from the self-confidence they acquire and the awareness they develop of the world outside their homes and immediate communities, from organized athletics, dance, drama, museum visits, recreational reading, and other activities that develop their inquisitiveness, creativity, self-discipline, and organizational skills. After-school and summer programs can be expected to have a chance to narrow the achievement gap only by attempting to duplicate such experiences.

Provision of health care services to lower-class children and their families is also needed to narrow the achievement gap. Some health care services are relatively inexpensive, like a school vision clinic. Dental clinics likewise can be provided at costs comparable to what schools typically spend on less-effective reforms. A full array of health services, however, will cost more, but can’t likely be avoided if there is a true intent to raise the achievement of lower-class children. Some of these costs, however, are not new; they can be recouped by school clinics with reimbursements from other underutilized government programs, like Medicaid.

For nearly half a century, the association of social and economic disadvantage with a student achievement gap has been well known to economists, sociologists, and educators. Most, however, have avoided the obvious implication of this understanding — raising the achievement of lower-class children requires amelioration of the social and economic conditions of their lives, not just school reform. Perhaps this small volume can spur a reconsideration of this needlessly neglected opportunity.

About the author

Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute and a visiting lecturer at Teachers College, Columbia University. From 1999 to 2002 he was the national education columnist for The New York Times ; he is now a senior correspondent for The American Prospect . Mr. Rothstein’s recent publications include The Way We Were? Myths and Realities of America’s Student Achievement (Century Foundation Press 1998), All Else Equal: Are Public and Private Schools Different? (with Luis Benveniste and Martin Carnoy; RoutledgeFalmer 2003), and Where’s the Money Going? Changes in the Level and Composition of Education Spending (EPI 1995, 1997).

This research was funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. We thank them for their support. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been making grants since 1966 to help solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. The Foundation concentrates its resources on activities in education, environment, performing arts, population, conflict resolution, and U.S.-Latin American relations. In addition, the Hewlett Foundation has initiatives supporting neighborhood improvement, philanthropy, and global affairs.

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Jennifer L. Hochschild

H.l. jayne professor of government, and professor of african and african american studies.

Center for Government and International Studies 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Social Class in Public Schools

Date published:.

Running head:  SOCIAL CLASS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Departments of Government and Afro-American Studies

Harvard University

Journal of Social Issues,  November 2003

*Correspondence for this article should be addressed to: Jennifer Hochschild, Government Department, Littauer Center, North Harvard Yard, Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138, E-mail: [ [email protected] ].  This article derives from (Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003).  My thanks to Nate Scovronick for all his work on our joint venture, and to Elizabeth Cole and Joan Ostrove for their engagement and encouragement. 

Contact Information, Not for Publication:

Phone: (617) 496-0181

Fax: (617) 495-0438.

This article shows the pattern of socioeconomic class differences in schooling outcomes and indicates some of the causes for those differences that lie within the public realm. Those causes include “nested inequalities” across boundaries of states, school districts, schools within a district, classes within a school, and sometimes separation within a class.  Urban public schools demonstrate a particular set of problems that generate differential schooling outcomes by economic class.  The article also demonstrates ways in which class biases are closely entwined with racial and ethnic inequities.  It concludes with the broad outlines of what would be necessary to reduce class (and racial) disparities in American public schools. 

The American dream will succeed or fail in the 21 st century in direct proportion to our commitment to educate every person in the United States of America.

-- President Bill Clinton, 1995 (Clinton, 1995: 617)  

There is no greater test of our national responsibility than the quality

of the education we provide.

                       --Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, 2000 (Gore, 2000)

Both parties have been talking about education for quite a while.  It’s time to come together to get it done, so that we can truthfully say in America: No child will be left behind.

-- President George W. Bush, 2001 (Bush, 2001)

That presidents and candidates were all saying the same thing is no coincidence. They were echoing what the American public said in survey after survey throughout the past decade: education is “the most important problem facing the nation” (e.g. CNN/ U.S.A. Today , 2000; Gallup Organization, 2000), or “most important in [my] vote for president” (e.g. ABC News, 2000; Kaiser Family Foundation & Harvard University School of Public Health, 2000; see also Wilgren, 2000).  In the election of November 2000, fourteen states offered 24 measures about K-12 schooling for citizens to vote on directly. The Economist lectured Britain’s former subjects that the next American president “will have to get to grips with… the public education system.  This is America’s last best chance to tackle” what it called the “failure” of public schooling ("And Now, Mr. President...", 2000: 27).

Citizens, politicians, and journalists are correct, at least about the importance of schools.  Education largely and increasingly determines an individual’s job choice and income (Danziger & Reed, 1999, p.16). It more and more determines whom one will marry (Kalmijn, 1991; Mare, 1991). It has more impact than any other factor, possibly excepting wealth, on whether one participates in politics, what one believes politically, and how much political influence one has (Verba, 2001; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). It is the arena in which the United States has sought to overcome racial domination and class hierarchy, to turn immigrants into Americans, to turn children into responsible citizens, to create and maintain our democracy (Cremin, 1988; Gutmann, 1987; Kluger, 1975; Spring, 2000; Tyack, 1974).               

In many ways public schools in the United States have responded to these aspirations.  Compared with a few decades ago, dropout rates have declined (National Center for Education Statistics, 2002, tables 108, 109); children with disabilities are in school buildings rather than institutions that could be described as “human warehouses” (Braddock & Parish, 2001; McDonnell, McLaughlin, & Morison, 1997; National Center for Education Statistics, 2002: tables 53, 110); resources are more equally distributed ( Education Week, 2002;   Reed, 2001; Rothstein, 2000); black children are not required by law to attend inferior schools for fewer hours a day and shorter school years than white children (Orfield, 1978; Salomone, 1986; Tushnet, 1987); overall achievement scores are up (National Center for Education Statistics, 2002, tables 112, 115, 124, 125).  Most importantly perhaps, the gap in nationally-recognized achievement test scores between students with poorly- and well-educated parents has declined since the 1970s (National Center for Education Statistics, 2002, tables 112, 124). 

Yet this progress has met limits.  Hispanics drop out much more frequently than others, as do poor students and students in large urban schools (Driscoll, 1999; Rumberger & Thomas, 2000; Hauser, Simmons, & Pager, 2001; National Center for Education Statistics, 2002, tables 107, 108).  Achievement scores have changed little in the 1990s; the gaps between black and white achievement, and between the scores of the highest and lowest achievers, have remained static or even risen over that decade (National Center for Education Statistics, 2002, tables 112, 113, 124, 125). Disadvantaged children continue to score roughly ten percent below the national average on NAEP tests while advantaged children score several percent above (author’s calculations from data in National Center for Education Statistics, 2000c).  Some urban schools seem to teach very little despite teachers’ and students’ valiant efforts (Anyon, 1997; Education Week , 1998; Hayward, 2000; Henig, Hula, Orr, & Pedescleaux, 1999). 

Most importantly, adults’ life chances depend increasingly on attaining higher education, but the number of young adults completing college has stalled since the 1970s and class background is as important as ever in determining who attends and finishes college (Ellwood & Kane, 2000; Kane, 2001). Over three-quarters of well-off young adults go straight from high school to college, compared with half of poor youth. Well-off students are also more likely to go to a four-year rather than a two-year college (Card & Lemieux, 2001; National Center for Education Statistics, 1994).

               This article shows the pattern of class differences in schooling outcomes and indicates some of the causes for those differences that lie within the public realm.  It also points out the implications of the fact that the poor in the United States are disproportionately African Americans or recent immigrants; class biases are closely entwined with racial and ethnic inequities.  I conclude with the broad outlines of what would be necessary to reduce, even if we can never eliminate, class (and racial) disparities in American public schools.

Nested Inequalities

Disparities in schooling outcomes can be understood as two deeply embedded patterns of inequality.  The first is a system of nested inequalities affecting all students.  It begins with states. Children in Iowa, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and North Dakota have more than a 50 percent likelihood of enrolling in college by age nineteen, but children in Florida, Arizona, Alaska, and Nevada have less than a 30 percent chance (Hodgkinson, 1999, figure 2).  Fewer than three percent of students in Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Iowa drop out of school; more than seven percent do in Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico and Nevada (National Center for Education Statistics, 2002, table 105). 

Overall, about a third of the variation in students’ achievement is determined by what state they live in (Murray, Evans, & Schwab, 1998; National Center for Education Statistics, 2000d, p. 40-42).  But inequalities within a state can be just as severe.  Connecticut provides unusually detailed evidence on this point. The district that spends the most provides almost twice as much per student as the district that spends the least.  There are over 150 times more poor students in the poorest town than in the richest town; some districts have no minority students whereas in others virtually all students are non-Anglos; in some districts all students speak English at home whereas in others up to two-thirds of the students speak some other language with their families (Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, 1997, p. vii-ix).   These disparities correspond to equally great differences in educational outcomes across districts:  “On the Connecticut Mastery Test, the best performing municipality has scores nearly three times as high as the lowest scoring community…. In the worst-performing municipality, 49% of the class of 1995 dropped out during the four years before graduation; in the best performing community the drop-out rate was 0%.  The rate of graduates who continue their education beyond high school ranges from less than 50% to 98%” (Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, 1997, p. viii).  Many, although not all, of the indicators of class-based advantage or disadvantage correlate highly with the differences in educational outcomes.  Districts with a lot of poor students have lower average test scores and higher dropout rates; districts with a lot of minority students, or a lot whose native language is not English, also have lower average test scores.  (These districts are often the same.)  The highest spending districts report high test scores, and some of the lowest spending districts report the lowest test scores, although the pattern in the middle-wealth districts is less clear (Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, 1997, p. 5, 10-12).

Third, schools vary within districts.  In Yonkers, New York, for example, schools in the northern and eastern section were built relatively recently and have beautiful grounds and excellent facilities; schools in the southwestern section were built in some cases a century ago, with tiny playgrounds of cracked and slanted cement (or none at all) and dismal laboratories and libraries.  It is not difficult to figure out the racial or ethnic and class composition of the students in these schools (Hochschild & Danielson, 1998).  Yonkers is not alone. In New York City, funding for regular students in elementary schools varied by as much as $10,000 per student in the late 1990s; per capita operating funds were particularly low in schools with many poor or immigrant students. In some New York City grade schools all of the teachers are certified, and in some the pupil/teacher ratio is well below ten; in others, only two out of five teachers are certified or the ratio of students to teachers is well over 20. Schools with a lot of poor students or limited English speakers had significantly fewer certified teachers and higher student/teacher ratios.  In some New York City schools, all of the students perform at least at the fiftieth percentile in reading tests, but in others barely one-seventh do (data on New York City are in Iatarola & Stiefel, 2003; see also Hertert, 1995; Rothstein, 2000).

Finally, children’s schooling varies even within a school.  Almost all high schools, many middle schools, and some elementary schools sort students by measured ability; well-off children, who are disproportionately white and Asian, almost always dominate the high tracks (Argys, Rees, & Brewer, 1996; Lucas, 1999; Mickelson & Heath, 1999).  Students with disabilities or with limited English proficiency are not likely to be in high tracks regardless of their talents (August & Hakuta, 1998; McDonnell, et al., 1997). Students shunted into low-ability classes or nonacademic tracks frequently end up with poorly- or inappropriately-trained teachers, few resources, trivial curricula, and no accountability (Heubert & Hauser, 1999; Ingersoll, 2002).

Thus every student sits at the center of at least four nested structures of inequality and separation – states, districts, schools, and classes.  Well-off or white and Asian parents usually manage to ensure that their children obtain the benefits of this structure; poor and non-Asian minority parents have a much harder time doing so (Mollenkopf, Zeltzer-Zubida, Holdaway, Kasinitz, & Waters, 2002). As a result, the United States has not witnessed the full equality of educational opportunity between classes that one would expect from all the reforms since the 1960s and from Americans’ commitments to equality of opportunity (Hochschild, 1995).  Analysts talk about “speed bumps on the road to meritocracy” (Hout, 1997, title) or “(re)emerging inequality in the opportunity structure going into the 21 st century,” (Biblarz & Raftery, 1999, p. 249) or an “increase [in the] relative importance of social background for college entry” (Lucas, 1996, p. 511). Details vary in these analyses but the pattern is clear: the progress our nation made toward equal opportunity in schooling up until the 1980s has stopped and perhaps even reversed (see also Acemoglu & Pischke, 2001; Biblarz, 2000; Ishida, 1993).

Failing Inner City Schools

“We have kids without teachers, teachers without classrooms, and a district without a clue. The system is broken.  Students and teachers are a forgotten priority here,” says the president of the Los Angeles teachers union (White, 1999, p. 3).  City schools like these demonstrate the other deeply embedded pattern of class disparities in schooling.  Disastrous schools affect only a minority of children, but them very seriously; “for years it was like storming the Bastille everyday,” reports one urban teacher (Olson, 1998, p. 1).

As there is with the system of nested inequalities, there is plenty of evidence pointing to the disproportionate failures of urban schools. More than twice as many students attend high-poverty schools in urban than in nonurban districts (Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1998, p. 16-17), but in some states, urban districts spend less per pupil than do nonurban districts (National Center For Education Statistics, 2002, indicator 56). Urban districts have larger classes and contain the largest schools  ( Education Week, 1998, p. 19;  National Center for Education Statistics, 2001, table A). Compared with suburban districts, teachers in city schools are less likely to be certified or to have studied in the areas that they teach, and more likely to leave before the end of the school year.  In some years and for some subjects, it is hard to find any teachers at all to fill slots in urban schools ( Education Week , 1998 , p. 16-17). Urban schools are more likely to have inadequate buildings, classrooms, and technology ( Education Week , 1998, p. 21; General Accounting Office, 1995).  They suffer from much more administrative and behavioral turmoil and have a higher level of disruption, violence, and anxiety about safety ( Education Week , 1998 , p. 18-19).  All of the big districts with high dropout rates are in large cities ( Education Week , 1998, p. 13; Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003, p. 25-27; 61-63, 78-80, 84-87; National Center for Education Statistics, 2001, p. table 16).

From an educator’s perspective, interactions among these characteristics can be overwhelming. The San Diego school district, for example, offered each of twenty failing schools $16,500 of extra funds in 1998.  An evaluation of one such school then called for a full-time nurse, a full-time counselor, a parent room, a pre-kindergarten program, an adult literacy program, and an end to assigning teachers by seniority (a union regulation; Reinhard, 1998).  Ninety percent of the children in this school are poor, 40 percent have limited English proficiency, many move frequently. Two of the twenty teachers are out on “stress disability,” and a third are brand new.  In the face of these substantial challenges, the principal claims that “we’ve pulled together, and we’re going to do the best we can” (Reinhard, 1998, p. 15).  But her chances of success seem slim, and the children in her school will probably have little chance to pursue their dreams or to share meaningfully in the responsibilities of democratic citizenship.

            Thus the worst-off students and schools have a completely different educational experience from the best-off, with predictably different outcomes. Here is where class and race are most tightly entwined, since in the 100 largest school districts, almost 70 percent of the students are non-Anglo (compared with 40 percent of students nationally), and over half are poor or near-poor (compared with fewer than 40 percent nationally) (National Center for Education Statistics, 2001, p. 4-5).  And the interactions among race and class are becoming tighter: during the 1970s and 1980s, “the gap in the quality of schools that blacks and whites attend has widened … due entirely to a worsening in the relative quality of schools located in poor, inner-city areas and in schools that are less than 20% white” (Cook & Evans, 2000, p. 747).  In fact, black students in nonurban schools actually did better during this period, even while black students in urban schools did worse (Cook & Evans, 2000).  Similarly, during the 1990s, the least accomplished quarter of fourth grade readers lost ground in NAEP tests, while the most accomplished improved their test scores.  The top scorers were mostly white, the low scorers were disproportionately black and Latino boys in poor urban schools (Zernike, 2001).

Increasing Inequality among Communities

Both patterns of class disparity – nested inequalities among all students, and utterly disastrous schooling for a few students – are made worse by the fact that socioeconomic separation across the society is growing, even as racial and ethnic separation is slowly declining (Abramson, Tobin, & VanderGroot, 1995; Rusk, 2002).  Residential separation between well-off and poor Americans declined in the 1950s and 1960s; by 1970, the typical affluent American lived in a neighborhood where two-fifths of the residents were also affluent.  But residential separation rose as the wealthy moved to outer suburbs, so that by 1990, the typical affluent American lived in a neighborhood where over half of the neighbors were also affluent (Massey, 1996, p. 396-399).  Conversely, the proportion of poor people living in poor neighborhoods in inner cities increased from 55 to 69 percent over the same twenty years. From 1970 to 1990, every one of the 48 largest cities, from the poorest in comparison to its suburbs (Hartford) to the wealthiest compared with its suburbs (Greensboro, North Carolina), became poorer in relation to its suburbs (Madden, 2000, p. 3-7). The very poorest Americans have become even more concentrated; the 100 largest cities’ share of the nation’s welfare recipients grew from almost 48 percent in 1994 to over 58 percent in 1999 (Allen & Kirby, 2000). 

Not surprisingly given these demographic changes, in the decade after 1982 economic disparities between school districts rose, whether measured by household income, poverty rates, or rates of housing vacancy (Ho, 1999). In my view, if leaders of the American system of public schools truly sought to promote equal opportunity, they would enact policies to offset these growing disparities.  And sometimes they do, as we have seen in the context of efforts to promote desegregation of schools, to equalize funding across wealthy and poor districts, and to improve test scores of poorly-achieving students. But too many policies have the effect if not the intent of reinforcing inequality and helping to maintain acute deprivation, as I demonstrate in the next section.

Policies That Reinforce Inequality

               Poor children bring many problems to school that more affluent children usually avoid, all of which affect their readiness to learn and their ability to take advantage of what they are taught. These problems include poor health and nutrition, greater family instability, more frequent moves, less safe communities, fewer books and educational resources in the home or neighborhood, a greater likelihood of having parents or other caretakers who have little formal education and/or speak little English, and anxieties about racial or ethnic discrimination (Anyon, 1997; Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, Klebanov, & Sealand, 1993; Garfinkel, Hochschild, & McLanahan, 1996; Pogue, 2000).  If policy-makers seek to reduce class disparities, they must attend to these problems, for which the educational system cannot be blamed.  Nevertheless, public schools could do much more than they do to offset the harms that poor students bring to school. In particular, three features of schooling correspond to the system of nested inequalities and worsen the disadvantages of poor urban schools, thereby reinforcing social class inequities. They are financial inequality across states and districts, disparities in the quality of teaching across districts, schools, and classrooms, and excessive ability grouping and unequal curricular offerings across schools and classrooms.

Financial Inequities : The nation as a whole spent about $7,080 per student in 2001.  Controlling for regional cost differences, the most generous states were New Jersey at $9,360, New York at $8,860, Connecticut at $8,800, and Wisconsin at $8,740.  The most abstemious states, with the same controls, were Utah at an astounding $4,580, Arizona at $5,010, and California at $5,600.  In six states, virtually all of the students attended school in districts with per pupil expenditures at or above the U.S. average; in an additional six states, six percent or fewer of the students enjoyed similar levels of resources (all data in Education Week , 2002, p. 86-87).   

            Befitting a structure of nested inequalities, disparities in funding across districts within a state may be almost as great. Some states have very slim bands of inequality; Delaware, Florida, Iowa, and West Virginia show less than eight percent variation among all districts around the average-spending district. But in other states the variation around the average-spending district is huge -- 33 percent in Alaska and close to 20 percent in Vermont, Montana, North Dakota, and New Hampshire (the measure here is the coefficient of variation; data are adjusted to control for local cost differences and weighted for student needs [defined as poverty and special education]; all data in Education Week, 2002, p. 88-89).   In New York and New Jersey, disparities between the schools in the top and bottom deciles of funding grew dramatically in the two decades after 1973-74 (Schneier, 2001, p. 229).  That trajectory was reversed in New Jersey in the 1990s; we do not know how typical these two states are.

            In my view, more money is not all that is needed to improve schooling outcomes for poor children, and I, like others, have observed schools with few resources doing a fantastic job of teaching poor children.  But usually more money is necessary if not sufficient to provide better schooling; it enables preschool, smaller classes, better libraries and labs, higher-paid teachers, newer textbooks, art and music classes, professional development, and all the things that contribute to improved educational outcomes.  It is unlikely that a parent chooses to move to a lower-spending district if she can afford to live in a higher-spending district, and districts never vie to spend less in the endless disputes in state legislatures over funding formulas.  So money matters, although how and how much needs more careful consideration than we can give it here (for more on school finance reform and its effects, see Burtless, 1996; Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003; Ladd, Chalk, & Hansen, 1999; Ladd & Hansen, 1999; Ludwig & Bassi, 1999).

            Quality of Teaching:  The evidence is clear on the positive effects of good teachers and the harm that can be done by bad ones; in one study, elementary students taught for three years in a row by highly ineffective teachers ended up in the 45 th percentile or below on state math tests, whereas students with three particularly good teachers scored over the 85 th percentile (Sanders & Rivers, 1996; see also Bembry, Jordan, Gomez, Anderson, & Mendro, 1998; Mendro, Jordan, Gomez, Anderson, & Bembry, 1998; National Center for Education Statistics, 2000e, p. 5-7). As these studies suggest, the impact of poor teaching can be dramatic, cumulative, and difficult to reverse.

Yet students who live in poor districts, or poor students (often students of color) in a given district or school, are much more likely to be taught by less effective teachers, no matter how effectiveness is defined (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Education Trust, 2000; Puma & Drury, 2000; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 1998: 32; Wenglinsky, 2000). Schools with the highest levels of poverty and the largest proportion of minority students have twice as many new teachers as the best-off and whitest schools (Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2002; see also National Center for Education Statistics, 2000e, p. 13-14), despite the fact that experienced teachers are more effective ( National Center for Education Statistics, 2000e, p. 13; Ogawa, Huston, & Stine, 1999, p. 661). Teachers are especially likely to leave high-poverty schools, which makes it difficult to develop a sense of community and a shared culture of learning (Recruiting New Teachers, 2000).  Some studies assert the effectiveness of state certification and licensure requirements (Darling-Hammond, 2001; Darling-Hammond, Berry, & Thoreson, 2001; for counter-arguments see Abell Foundation, 2001; Goldhaber & Brewer, 2000) -- but more noncertified teachers work in high-poverty and/or urban schools than in their wealthier or suburban counterparts (Ingersoll, 2002).  Even in the context of an overall decline in academic qualifications of new teachers over the past few decades (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000e, p. 7-10), students in poor districts are most likely to have teachers who themselves test poorly (Education Trust, 2000, p. 8).  Minority children, students in high-poverty schools, and lower-achieving classes more often have teachers who have not majored or minored in the subject they are teaching, especially in math and science (Ingersoll, 2002). These are, however, the fields for which the relationship between subject area knowledge and effectiveness has been most clearly demonstrated (Goldhaber & Brewer, 2000).

The evidence continues.  Schools, and especially classrooms, with high concentrations of poor or non-Anglo children have fewer and older computers, and less access to the internet (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000a). More generally, teachers in high-poverty or urban schools are more likely to report inadequate teaching resources ( Education Week , 1998, p. 21).  In California, the number of unqualified teachers rose dramatically in recent years, mainly in classrooms with Hispanic, disadvantaged, or low-achieving students ( CSR Research Consortium 2002; Ogawa et al., 1999; Jepson & Rivkin, 2002).

The challenges here are as analytically simple as they are politically and organizationally huge; without a large number of qualified, dedicated, experienced teachers for poor children, and classrooms with reasonable resources for those teachers to use, the odds against their participation in the American dream are almost insuperable.

Ability Grouping and Curricular Offerings:  Finally, in the fourth level of the structure of nested inequalities, students are separated by socioeconomic class as well as by measured ability into different experiences within a given school.  Arguments flourish about the causes and consequences of tracking and ability grouping, but several things seem clear. 

First, although tracking used to be racially discriminatory, by now “the claim of racial discrimination in group placement by teachers is not supported by research, once conventional indicators of merit or economic standing are accounted for” (Ferguson, 1998, p. 329). However, analysts almost universally agree that there is considerable discrimination in ability grouping on the basis of class , even controlling for achievement and other factors.  The raw facts are startling enough – almost three times as many high-income as low-income students enroll in college preparatory tracks. In more sophisticated analyses, achievement and ability (typically measured by test scores, prior placements, and teachers’ judgments) almost always show up as the chief determinants of students’ placement – but class-based factors usually come in second (Dauber, Alexander, & Entwistle, 1996; Gamoran & Mare, 1989; Jones, Vanfossen, & Ensminger, 1995; Miller, 1995, p. 237-240; National Center for Education Statistics, 2000b).

There is a more worrisome problem with the practice of ability grouping.  If achievement tests are racially biased, or if poor (especially poor black and Hispanic) children consistently receive the worst teaching and therefore learn the least, then the fact that measured prior achievement most strongly determines a student’s placement is not reassuring to those concerned about equal opportunity in schooling or diversity in classrooms.  So the congruence among poverty, minority status, and low quality of teaching becomes reinforced by ability grouping, even when it relies more on measured achievement than on teachers’ (perhaps biased) judgments or parents’ insistence.

The thorniest issues, however, present an even more severe challenge to the goal of equal opportunity: if grouping by ability harms the chances of many, even while benefiting some, its costs may be too high. The empirical literature on the effects of ability-based separation does frustratingly little to help resolve the issue of whether the costs outweigh the benefits, since careful studies show all possible combinations of results.  Some find that all grouped students can benefit (Camarena, 1990; Epple, Newlon, & Romano, 2002; Epstein & MacIver, 1992; Ferguson, 1998; Figlio & Page, 2002; Lou et al., 1996; Valli, 1990).  Others find that grouping makes little difference compared with other schooling variables, or that it reduces overall achievement levels (Gamoran, 1992; Slavin, 1990a; Slavin, 1990b). The most recent and methodologically sophisticated articles in this literature, however, find that students in high tracks benefit from grouping and students in low tracks are harmed, or at least are not helped (Argys, et al., 1996; Gamoran & Mare, 1989; Garet & DeLany, 1988; Lucas, 1999).

Two conclusions shine through this morass.  First, contradictions in the research point to differences in practice that call for a careful policy choice. Experimental studies that control for most factors affecting students’ outcomes show that, when curriculum and instructional methods are similar for all students, skill grouping by itself neither consistently helps nor harms students (e.g. Ferguson, 1998).  But studies of actual school settings usually find that students in the low groups do worse than they should, even given their presumedly lower ability (Shepard, 1992). The proper debate, then, is whether educators should seek to abolish ability grouping on the grounds that it will never be fairly done, or whether they should concentrate on ensuring a challenging curriculum, equal teaching quality, and a fair allocation of resources across groups (Exchange, 1994).

            Second, the contradictory research results imply that “decisions about grouping are preliminary and what matters most comes next: decisions about what to do with students after they are assigned to classes. Given poor instruction, neither heterogeneous nor homogeneous grouping can be effective; with excellent instruction, either may succeed” (Gamoran, 1993, p. 44; see also Ferguson, 1998; Oakes, Gamoran, & Page, 1992).  As the most influential book seeking to abolish tracking put it, “the most significant thing we found is that generally our entire sample of classes turned out to be pretty noninvolving places…. Passive activities… were dominant at all track levels…. Any statements that can be made about differences between tracks… must be seen in this context” (Oakes, 1985, p. 129).

              The deepest problem, then, is that too many students are poorly taught, and students in low ability groups – disproportionately poor students, who are disproportionately of color -- usually are the most poorly taught of all (Good, 1987; Ingersoll, 1999; Weiss, 1997).  And these failures and inequities have long-term effects:  the intensity and quality of secondary school curriculum have the greatest impact on completion of a bachelor’s degree, a far greater impact than SES, ethnicity and race, and even test scores and high school class rank (Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 1999, Executive Summary).

The issue of curriculum quality points us toward “tracking” at the level of schools or districts rather than students.  Middle schools in poor or non-Asian minority communities frequently do not offer algebra in eighth grade, even though it is essential for high-level mathematics in high school (Jones et al., 1995; Monk & Rice, 1997; Raudenbush, Fotiu, & Cheong, 1998; Spade, Columba, & Vanfossen, 1997).  Poor schools are less likely to offer advanced mathematics or science courses, Advanced Placement (AP) courses, or honors English and history courses than schools in wealthier and predominantly white communities  (Oakes et al., 1992, p. 589; National Center for Education Statistics, 1995, table A2.2b). Children of parents who have not attended college, who are disproportionately poor and nonwhite, are twice as likely to attend schools that do not offer algebra in eighth grade as children whose parents completed college (National Center for Education Research, 2000b).  

In 1999, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit against the state of California, claiming that “129 California public high schools with 80,000 students do not offer any AP courses; and 333 schools offer four or fewer.  In contrast,… 144 public high schools in California offer more than 14 AP courses” (Sahagun & Weiss, 1999, p. A13). Small rural schools and schools in poor urban districts were least likely to offer AP courses, thus disadvantaging African Americans, recent Latino immigrants, and poor whites, especially since the University of California at Berkeley and UCLA weigh AP courses and their test scores heavily in admissions decisions.  The general counsel for the state’s department of education agreed that “this is a genuine equity issue and I think it will have enough political push to bring about a solution” (Bathen, 1999, p. M3). Prodded by this lawsuit, the College Board set up a program to ensure that all public high schools offer AP courses within a few years (currently 40 percent do not), and some schools are encouraging more students to take them (Viadero, 2001).

Directions for Public Policy

This is not the place to analyze in detail what ought to be done to reduce the patterns of nested inequalities and concentrated harms in public schooling; any serious policy change is enormously complicated, particularly in the diffuse and decentralized world of public schooling. Nevertheless, the outlines of the moves needed to weaken the link between social class and educational outcomes are clear.

Where it has been reasonably implemented, educating poor children with students who are more privileged, or educating them like students who are more privileged, has improved their performance and long-term chances of success (Kahlenberg, 2000; Rubinowitz & Rosenbaum, 2000).  Quality preschool, individual reading instruction, small classes in the early grades, assignment to classes with peers who take school seriously and behave in ways that enable them to learn, and consistently challenging academic courses have been shown to help disadvantaged children achieve, just as they enable middle-class children to achieve (for reviews of this extensive literature, see Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003; Puma & Drury, 2000).  Most importantly, qualified, knowledgeable teachers make a difference, as described above.  Well-off children almost always attend schools that have most of these features; poor children too frequently do not.

An honest attempt to secure a good education for poor children therefore leaves policymakers with two difficult choices.  They can send them to schools with wealthier children, or they can, as a reasonable second-best, seek to give them an education in their own neighborhoods that has the features of schooling for well-off students.  The former has proved so far to be too expensive politically, and the latter has often been too expensive financially (for histories of and evidence on school desegregation and school finance equalization efforts, see Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003).  After a decade of studying the subject, I conclude that if Americans really wanted all children to have a real chance to learn, they would

• eliminate disparities in funding across states, districts, and schools and provide extra funding for the poorest schools and districts as needed;
•  provide the resources needed to overcome the social, health-related, and physical problems that poor children disproportionately bring into schools;
• redistribute the teaching staff and enhance the quality, training, and deployment of all teachers;
• implement clear standards for higher-order learning, with appropriate supports, and hold schools and educators as well as students accountable;
• eliminate the forms of ability grouping with no demonstrated benefits and ensure that all schools and classrooms offer stimulating and difficult curricula;
• redraw district and neighborhood assignment lines to ensure a broad mix of students across economic strata (and races or ethnicities) within a school.

The worst urban schools would be reconstituted or shut down, and the children in them dispersed among schools with a much higher proportion of middle class students.

Moving poor children into more affluent schools is not a panacea. When poor families move from deeply poor neighborhoods into communities with very little poverty, the children typically have more behavioral problems in school, even though their test scores improve (Ludwig, Ladd, & Duncan, 2001).  African American students also report more racism among their new classmates and neighbors, and worry about holding their own socially in their new environment  (Rubinowitz & Rosenbaum, 2000).  These social and emotional difficulties warrant concern, but they pale beside the much larger problem of racial and class isolation; I think it would be a sign of enormous progress if our chief problem was encouraging poor and well-off children in the same school and classroom to engage with each other more effectively.

Similarly, improving the quality of schooling in impoverished schools is extraordinarily difficult.  Educators within a school develop a culture, and some urban schools have developed a culture of failure (Payne, 1997).  In others, educators focus more on workplace concerns, racially based frustrations, a search for power in their community, or other issues of real importance but remote from a focus on teaching and learning (Henig et al., 1999; Orr, 1999; Rich, 1996).  These problems similarly warrant concern, but probably most urban schools suffer more from the less exotic problems of insufficient resources, lower quality teaching, and students’ needs for intensive instruction.  In any case, it would be worth finding out.

Public schools are essential to enable Americans to succeed, but schools are also the arena in which some children first fail.  Failure there almost certainly guarantees failure from then on.  Americans would like to believe that failure results from lack of individual merit and effort; in reality, failure in school too closely tracks structures of racial and class inequality.  American schools too often reinforce rather than contend against those structures; that is understandable but not acceptable. 

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Author Biography

Jennifer Hochschild is a Professor of Government at Harvard University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Afro-American Studies.  She received a B.A from Oberlin College in 1971 and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1979.   She is the author of Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation (Princeton University Press, 1995); The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy and School Desegregation (Yale University Press, 1984); What's Fair: American Beliefs about Distributive Justice ( Harvard University Press, 1981) and a co-author of Equalities (Harvard University Press, 1981).  She is a co-editor of Social Policies for Children (Brookings Institution Press, 1995).  Prof. Hochschild is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a former vice-president of the American Political Science Association, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation, and a member of the Board of Overseers of the General Social Survey.  She has received fellowships or awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Spencer Foundation, the American Political Science Association, the Princeton University Research Board, and other organizations.  She has also served as a consultant or expert witness in several school desegregation cases, most recently the on-going case of Yonkers Board of Education v. New York State .

Do Facts Matter?: Information and Misinformation in American Politics

Outsiders No More?: Models of Immigrant Political Incorporation

Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America

Bringing Outsiders In: Transatlantic Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation

Social Class and Educational Achievement Essay Plan

Last Updated on January 11, 2019 by

Evaluate the extent to which home based, rather than school – based factors account for social class based differences in educational achievement (30)

The lower classes are more likely to suffer from material deprivation at home which can hold children back in education because of a lack access to resources such as computers, or living in a smaller house means they would be less likely to have a quiet, personal study space. In extreme situations, children may have a worse diet and a colder house, which could mean illness and time off school. According to Gibson and Asthana, the effects of material deprivation are cumulative, creating a cycle of deprivation. This would suggest that home background influences a child’s education.

Also, the amount of money one has and the type of area one lives in affects the type of school a child can get to. Richer parents have more choice of school because they are more likely to have two cars or be able to afford public transport to get their children to a wider range of schools. Also, house prices in the catchment areas of the best schools can be up to 20% higher than similar houses in other areas – richer parents are more able to afford to move to these better schools. At the other end of the social class spectrum, those going to school in the most deprived areas may suffer disruptions in school due to gang related violence. All of this suggests that location, which is clearly part of your ‘home background’ in the broader sense of the word, is a major factor in educational achievement.

Cultural deprivation also has a negative effect on children at home. Bernstein pointed out that working class children are more likely to be socialised into the restricted speech code and so are less able to understand teachers at school compared to their middle class peers who speak in the elaborated speech code. The classes are also taught the value of immediate rather than deferred gratification, and so are less likely to see the value of higher education. In these theories, home background influences children all the way through school.

Although the concept of cultural deprivation is decasdes old, more recent research suggests it is still of relevance. Fenstein’s (2003) research found that lower income is strongly correlated with a lack of ability to communicate, while research by Conor et al (2001) found that being socialised into poverty means working class students are less likely to want to go to university than middle class students because they are more ‘debt conscious’.

Similarly, the case of Mossborn Academy and Tony Sewell’s Generating Genius programme show that schools can overcome disadvantage at home – if they provide strict discipline and high expectation.

So is it home background or school factors that matter? The research above suggests home background does have a role to play, however, you certainly cannot disregard in school factors in explaining class differences in educational achievement either – in my final analysis, I would have to say that the two work together – middle class advantage at home translating into better schooling, and vice versa for the working classes.

If you like this sort of thing – then you might like my A-level sociology revision bundles : The bundle contains 5 full, 30 mark sociology of education essays, written for the AQA specification.

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The Effects of Material Deprivation on Education

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Essay on Social Class And Education

Students are often asked to write an essay on Social Class And Education in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Social Class And Education

Social class and education.

Social class and education are closely linked. Children from wealthy families tend to have access to better educational resources, such as private schools, tutors, and enrichment programs. They are also more likely to grow up in neighborhoods with good schools and have parents who are involved in their education. As a result, children from wealthy families tend to do better in school and are more likely to go to college.

Poverty and Education

Breaking the cycle of poverty.

Education is one of the most important ways to break the cycle of poverty. By providing children from poor families with access to a quality education, we can help them to improve their life chances and give them a better future.

250 Words Essay on Social Class And Education

Social class and education are closely connected. Children from wealthier families tend to have better access to education and are more likely to succeed in school.

Wealth And Education

Social capital.

Another reason why social class and education are connected is that social capital plays a role. Social capital refers to the networks of relationships that people have. Wealthier families tend to have more social capital than poorer families. This means that they are more likely to know people who can help them get their children into good schools or who can provide them with information about the school system.

Overcoming Inequality

The connection between social class and education is a problem because it can lead to inequality. Children from poorer families are less likely to have access to a good education, which means that they are less likely to succeed in life. This can lead to a cycle of poverty, where children from poor families are more likely to stay poor. There are a number of things that can be done to address the connection between social class and education. One is to invest in early childhood education. This can help to ensure that all children have a strong foundation on which to build their education.

Overall, the connection between social class and education is a complex issue with no easy solutions. However, by understanding the problem, we can start to take steps to address it.

500 Words Essay on Social Class And Education

What is social class.

Social class refers to a category of people who share similar social, economic, and cultural characteristics. Essentially, it’s a way of grouping individuals based on their socioeconomic status and shared experiences. Social classes can be determined by various factors like income, education, occupation, and family background.

How Social Class Influences Education

Social class and education are interconnected and influence each other. Children from higher social classes tend to have better access to quality education, leading to higher educational attainment and better career opportunities. They often attend well-funded schools with experienced teachers, resources like libraries and technology, and a supportive learning environment. In contrast, children from lower social classes may face barriers in accessing quality education due to factors like poverty, lack of resources, and discrimination.

Role of Parents’ Education

Socioeconomic status and academic achievement.

Socioeconomic status, which includes factors such as income, occupation, and wealth, significantly impacts children’s academic achievement. Children from families with higher socioeconomic status often have access to better schools, extracurricular activities, private tutors, and other resources that contribute to their educational success. This can lead to a gap in academic achievement between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Importance of Equal Educational Opportunities

To promote social mobility and reduce educational inequality, it is crucial to ensure equal educational opportunities for all children, regardless of their social class. This includes providing access to quality education, resources, and support services for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Governments, schools, and communities must work together to break down barriers and create a level playing field for all students, allowing them to reach their full potential.

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Differential Educational Achievement by Social Class - In School Factors

Last updated 26 Jun 2020

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As well as factors outside school affecting the achievement of pupils, depending on their social class, so factors within the school can have a significant impact.

In-school factors are often suggested by interactionist sociologists who argue that it is not necessarily the structures of society that impacts educational achievement, but the relationships and interactions between pupils and between teachers and pupils . Some neo-Marxists agree with interactionists that these relationships can have a significant impact. Some of the theories and studies relating to this are detailed in another study note ( Relationships and Processes Within Schools ) and therefore this section tends to give more of an overview.

One important example of an in-school factor is labelling. Labelling theory was developed by the interactionist sociologist Howard Becker in relation to the concept of deviance, but other sociologists have developed the concept in the context of education. The broad idea is that teachers subconsciously label their pupils. Some of them are labelled as clever, well-behaved, etc. and others are labelled as trouble, naughty or stupid. The way the teacher will interact with the pupils differently, depending on how they label them and the student will in turn react to that labelling and one way they can react is to internalise it, accept it and live up to it. The important point here is that teachers might be more likely to label working-class pupils (especially working-class boys) negatively and therefore could create low achievement by expecting it.

Another important internal factor is the existence of anti-school subcultures . Theories and studies about this, such as Paul Willis’ “Learning to Labour” are detailed in other study notes, but the key point is that some students (particularly working-class boys, according to Willis) form subcultures within the school that are hostile to the school. For them, praise from teachers is bad, getting into trouble is good. The norms and values of the subculture are of messing about and avoiding work and to welcome poor grades. The subcultures have little interest in achievement and therefore it is unsurprising that the students who are likely to form such subcultures are also statistically likely to underperform.

Another in-school factor is suggested by Basil Bernstein and it is the idea that teachers, textbooks and external examiners use a particular language code (the elaborate code ) which middle-class pupils are also able to use, while working-class pupils tend to use the restricted code . Language codes are the different ways people communicate and Bernstein argues that middle-class pupils can switch between casual speech (the restricted code) and the elaborate code that is used in more formal situations. This is simply a result of the language codes used in the home and the life experiences that they have had (and therefore this links with the concept of cultural capital).

Working-class pupils, in contrast, tend to only use the restricted code. That is the code of informal spoken English that often features colloquialisms and idiomatic turns of phrase, non-standard grammar and simplistic sentence structure. The elaborate code often uses unexpected words and phrases, or uses words to mean something different from its usual meaning. This form of language often finds its way into textbooks and exam papers and therefore middle-class pupils are at an immediate advantage. To give an example, from an A Level Politics exam paper from several years ago:

“The powers of the prime minister are considerable.” Discuss.

A significant minority of candidates did not understand the meaning of the word considerable in this context. Whereas many pupils were able to see that this was a question they were well-prepared for (evaluating whether or not the prime minister was very powerful) others got into difficulties evaluating whether or not people considered the powers of the prime minister. The second group had not misread the question but they had tried to make sense of it in the restricted code. The writer of the question would not have tried to trip up the candidates who misunderstood; the meaning of the question was obvious to them because it was in the language code that they routinely used. The students who understood the question would have been surprised that some of their classmates did not: people tend not to be conscious of their own use of language codes. Teachers and exam writers tend to spot if they’ve used unusual or complex vocabulary and provide a definition or glossary. But this isn’t about difficult vocabulary, but about sentences and phrases that use familiar words but in unfamiliar ways.

In fact, teachers will often use sentences and refer pupils to articles and sections in textbooks that are largely meaningless to some of their pupils. This is not because those pupils are less intelligent than those that understand them. If the teacher taught the lesson in French and some pupils in the class spoke French and therefore understood, that is not necessarily because they are more intelligent, they just happened to have learnt that language.

Evaluating in school factors

In reality, it is hard to fully divide factors up between in-school and out-of-school as both impact each other. Something like language codes for instance is really both an out-of-school and in-school factor as it relates both to how people speak at home and in school. Anti-school subcultures might explain why working-class pupils underperform, but the question of why working-class pupils join them is more complex and must at least in part relate to matters outside school.

• Differential Educational Achievement

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The Persistent Grip of Social Class on College Admissions

The SAT is falling out of favor, but a study looking at essays suggests “soft factors” have their own issues.

By Arvind Ashok

It’s hard to disentangle social class from the college admissions process. The University of California system says it’s trying, announcing recently that it’s dropping consideration of the SAT and ACT. (It was part of a settlement in a lawsuit alleging that the tests are biased along lines of race, wealth and disability.)

More than half of U.S. colleges have made the tests optional for fall of 2021 admissions, according to FairTest , a group opposed to college entrance testing.

Because those tests are receiving so much scrutiny, it’s easy to overlook the influence of socioeconomic background on other admissions yardsticks.

Take the college essay. It’s the most important “soft factor” and the fourth-most important overall factor — after grades, curriculum strength and standardized test scores — according to a 2019 survey of admissions employees.

But essays can be polished by a paid professional third party, or helped along by an upper-middle-class parent.

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What Is Social Class, and Why Does it Matter?

How Sociologists Define and Study the Concept

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Class, economic class, socio-economic class, social class. What's the difference? Each refers to how people are sorted into groups—specifically ranked hierarchies —in society. There are, in fact, important differences among them.

Economic Class

Economic class refers specifically to how one ranks relative to others in terms of income and wealth. Simply put, we are sorted into groups by how much money we have. These groups are commonly understood as lower (the poorest), middle, and upper class (the richest). When someone uses the word "class" to refer to how people are stratified in society, they are most often referring to this.

The model of economic class we use today is a derivation of German philosopher Karl Marx 's (1818–1883) definition of class, which was central to his theory of how society operates in a state of class conflict. In that state, an individual's power comes directly from one's economic class position relative to the means of production—one is either an owner of capitalist entities or a worker for one of the owners. Marx and fellow philosopher Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) presented this idea in " The Manifesto of the Communist Party ," and Marx expounded in much greater length in volume one of his work called "Capital."

Socio-Economic Class

Socio-economic class, also known as socioeconomic status  and often abbreviated as SES, refers to how other factors, namely occupation and education, are combined with wealth and income to rank a person relative to others in society. This model is inspired by the theories of German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), who viewed the stratification of society as a result of the combined influences of economic class, social status (the level of a person's prestige or honor relative to others), and group power (what he called "party"). Weber defined "party" as the level of one's ability to get what they want, despite how others may fight them on it. Weber wrote about this in an essay titled "The distribution of power within the political community: Class, status, party," in his 1922 book "Economy and Society," published after his death.

Socio-economic class is a more complex formulation than economic class because it takes into account the social status attached to certain professions considered prestigious, like doctors and professors, for example, and to educational attainment as measured in academic degrees. It also takes into account the lack of prestige or even stigma that may be associated with other professions, like blue-collar jobs or the service sector, and the stigma often associated with not finishing high school. Sociologists typically create data models that draw on ways of measuring and ranking these different factors to arrive at a low, middle, or high SES for a given person.

Social Class

The term "social class" is often used interchangeably with SES, both by the general public and by sociologists alike. Very often when you hear it used, that is what it means. In a technical sense, however, social class is used to refer specifically to the characteristics that are less likely to change, or harder to change, than one's economic status, which is potentially changeable over time. In such a case, social class refers to the socio-cultural aspects of one's life, namely the traits, behaviors, knowledge, and lifestyle that one is socialized into by one's family. This is why class descriptors like "lower," "working," "upper," or "high" can have social as well as economic implications for how we understand the person described.

When someone uses "classy" as a descriptor, they are naming certain behaviors and lifestyle and framing them as superior to others. In this sense, social class is determined strongly by one's level of cultural capital , a concept developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) in his 1979 work "Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste." Bourdieu said that levels of class are determined by the attainment of a specific set of knowledge, behaviors, and skills that allow a person to navigate in society.

Why Does It Matter?

So why does class, however you want to name it or slice it, matter? It matters to sociologists because the fact that it exists reflects unequal access to rights, resources, and power in society—what we call social stratification . As such, it has a strong effect on the access an individual has to education, the quality of that education, and how high a level he or she can reach. It also affects who one knows socially, and the extent to which those people can provide advantageous economic and employment opportunities, political participation and power, and even health and life expectancy, among many other things.

Sources and Further Reading

• Cookson Jr., Peter W. and Caroline Hodges Persell. "Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools." New York: Basic Books, 1985.
• Marx, Karl. " Capital: A Critique of Political Economy ." Trans. Moore, Samuel, Edward Aveling and Friedrich Engels. Marxists.org, 2015 (1867).
• Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. " The Communist Manifesto ." Trans. Moore, Samuel and Friedrich Engels. Marxists.org, 2000 (1848).
• Weber, Max. "Economy and Society." ed. Roth, Guenther and Claus Wittich. Oakland: University of California Press, 2013 (1922).
• The Differences Between Socialism and Communism
• What Is Capitalism?
• What You Need to Know About Economic Inequality
• So What Is Culture, Exactly?
• Understanding Karl Marx's Class Consciousness and False Consciousness
• What's the Difference Between Prejudice and Racism?
• Max Weber's Key Contributions to Sociology
• What Does Consumerism Mean?
• Visualizing Social Stratification in the U.S.
• Understanding Alienation and Social Alienation
• What Is Cultural Hegemony?
• The Concept of Social Structure in Sociology
• What Is Socialism? Definition and Examples
• What Is Aristocracy? Definition and Examples
• What Is Social Stratification, and Why Does It Matter?
• Four Things That Set Americans Apart and Why They Matter

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• Introduction

History and usage of the term

Early theories of class.

• Karl Marx’s social theory of class

Contemporary theories of class

Characteristics of the principal classes.

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social class

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• National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts thought, feelings, and behaviour
• Oklahoma State University Pressbooks - The Impacts of Social Class
• The New York Times - Social Class is not about only Race
• Social Sci LibreTexts - Social Class
• CORE - The Economic Basis of Social Class
• The History Learning Site - Social Class and Achievement
• Pressbooks @ Howard Community College - Introduction to Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World - Social Class in the United States
• The Victorian Web - Social Class
• The Canadian Encyclopedia - Social Class
• social class - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

social class , a group of people within a society who possess the same socioeconomic status. Besides being important in social theory, the concept of class as a collection of individuals sharing similar economic circumstances has been widely used in censuses and in studies of social mobility .

The term class first came into wide use in the early 19th century, replacing such terms as rank and order as descriptions of the major hierarchical groupings in society. This usage reflected changes in the structure of western European societies after the industrial and political revolutions of the late 18th century. Feudal distinctions of rank were declining in importance, and the new social groups that were developing—the commercial and industrial capitalists and the urban working class in the new factories—were defined mainly in economic terms, either by the ownership of capital or, conversely, by dependence on wages . Although the term class has been applied to social groups in a wide range of societies, including ancient city-states , early empires , and caste or feudal societies, it is most usefully confined to the social divisions in modern societies, particularly industrialized ones. Social classes must be distinguished from status groups; the former are based primarily upon economic interests, while the latter are constituted by evaluations of the honour or prestige of an occupation, cultural position, or family descent .

Theories of social class were fully elaborated only in the 19th century as the modern social sciences , especially sociology , developed. Political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes , John Locke , and Jean-Jacques Rousseau discussed the issues of social inequality and stratification, and French and English writers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries put forth the idea that the nonpolitical elements in society, such as the economic system and the family , largely determined a society’s form of political life. This idea was taken farther by the French social theorist Henri de Saint-Simon , who argued that a state’s form of government corresponded to the character of the underlying system of economic production. Saint-Simon’s successors introduced the theory of the proletariat , or urban working class, as a major political force in modern society, directly influencing the development of Karl Marx’s theory of class, which has dominated later discussion of the topic.

Karl Marx ’s social theory of class

For Marx, what distinguishes one type of society from another is its mode of production (i.e., the nature of its technology and division of labour ), and each mode of production engenders a distinctive class system in which one class controls and directs the process of production while another class is, or other classes are, the direct producers and providers of services to the dominant class. The relations between the classes are antagonistic because they are in conflict over the appropriation of what is produced, and in certain periods, when the mode of production itself is changing as a result of developments in technology and in the utilization of labour , such conflicts become extreme and a new class challenges the dominance of the existing rulers of society. The dominant class, according to Marx, controls not only material production but also the production of ideas; it thus establishes a particular cultural style and a dominant political doctrine, and its control over society is consolidated in a particular type of political system . Rising classes that gain strength and influence as a result of changes in the mode of production generate political doctrines and movements in opposition to the ruling class.

The theory of class is at the centre of Marx’s social theory, for it is the social classes formed within a particular mode of production that tend to establish a particular form of state , animate political conflicts, and bring about major changes in the structure of society.

Subsequent theories of class have been chiefly concerned with revising, refuting, or providing an alternative to Marxism . Early in the 20th century, German sociologist Max Weber questioned the importance of social classes in the political development of modern societies, pointing out that religious mores, nationalism , and other factors played significant roles. Weber proposed limiting the concept of class to impersonal income distinctions between groups, thereby distinguishing class from social status , collectivities, or political hierarchies . But the Marxian emphasis on the importance of class conflict—i.e., on the conflict and struggle between the classes for control of the means of production—has been the most controversial issue dividing social theorists in their analysis of class structure. Many opponents of Marxist theory have focused attention on the functional interdependence of different classes and their harmonious collaboration with each other. And indeed, by the mid-20th century, it seemed undeniable that the classes in capitalist societies had tended to lose some of their distinctive character, and the antagonism between them had declined to such an extent that in most economically advanced countries it no longer produced serious political conflict. That trend seemed to have been arrested by the early 21st century, however, as growing inequality of wealth and income became a major political issue in some advanced countries, particularly the United States . Moreover, Marxism’s prediction of the proletariat’s successful revolution against the bourgeoisie and its replacement of the capitalist system with a classless society have rung hollow in light of the dismal record of most Marxist governments and their wholesale collapse from internal causes between 1989 and 1991.

Despite controversies over the theory of class, there is general agreement among social scientists on the characteristics of the principal social classes in modern societies. Sociologists generally posit three classes: upper, working (or lower), and middle.

The upper class in modern capitalist societies is often distinguished by the possession of largely inherited wealth. The ownership of large amounts of property and the income derived from it confer many advantages upon the members of the upper class. They are able to develop a distinctive style of life based on extensive cultural pursuits and leisure activities, to exert a considerable influence on economic policy and political decisions, and to procure for their children a superior education and economic opportunities that help to perpetuate family wealth.

Historically, the principal contrast with the upper class in industrial societies was provided by the working class, which traditionally consisted of manual workers in the extractive and manufacturing industries. Given the vast expansion of the service sector in the world’s most advanced economies, it has been necessary to broaden this definition to include in the working class those persons who hold low-paying, low-skilled, nonunionized jobs in such industries as food service and retail sales. There are considerable differences within the working class, however, and a useful distinction exists between skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers that broadly corresponds to differences in income level. What characterizes the working class as a whole is a lack of property and dependence on wages. Associated with this condition are relatively low living standards , restricted access to higher education , and exclusion, to a large extent, from the spheres of important decision making . Aside from the dramatic rise in living standards that occurred in the decades after World War II , the main factor affecting the working class since the mid-20th century was a general shift in the economy from manufacturing to service industries, which reduced the number of manual workers. In the United States and Britain , among other countries, the decline in traditional manufacturing industries left a core of chronically unemployed persons isolated from the economic mainstream in decaying urban areas. This new urban substratum of permanently jobless and underemployed workers has been termed the underclass by some sociologists.

The middle class may be said to include the middle and upper levels of clerical workers, those engaged in technical and professional occupations, supervisors and managers, and such self-employed workers as small-scale shopkeepers, businesspersons, and farmers. At the top—wealthy professionals or managers in large corporations—the middle class merges into the upper class, while at the bottom—routine and poorly paid jobs in sales, distribution, and transport—it merges into the working class.

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Opinion Class and wealth, not merit, are rewarded in Ireland's education system

THINGS THAT MATTER most are often the things we speak about least. They are the taboo subjects, kept hidden, and if spoken of are discussed in euphemisms or metaphors that hide the full truth.

Social class is one such subject in Ireland. Unlike in England and mainland Europe where class inequalities are part and parcel of political debate, ‘social class’ is rarely used in Ireland.

When people talk about class-based injustices, they are accused of making political debates ‘ideological’. Those who call discussions on social class ‘ideological’ don’t acknowledge the fact that all political perspectives are ideological. There is no view from nowhere.

Yet Ireland is as class divided as the UK or France, even if we pretend otherwise. Access to the most selective higher education courses such as medicine, are heavily dominated by those from the most affluent (white Irish) families (HEA 2019).

The majority of Traveller children do not complete second-level education, while children from migrant backgrounds are more likely to leave school early than native Irish children, and are disproportionately educated in larger urban schools in the more socio-economically deprived areas.

The most obvious place where we speak in metaphors and euphemisms about social class is in education, and one of the prime examples of this is the use of the term ‘disadvantaged’ .

‘Disadvantage/d’ is used to classify schools where poorer working class (and increasingly ethnic minorities) attend – and to describe the students themselves. The use of the term ‘disadvantage’, while intending to be respectful, is also concealing. It does not open up debates about the wealth and power differentials between classes that create inequalities in educational outcomes in the first instance.

• Read more  here  on how you can support a major Noteworthy project to investigate why the taxpayer is helping to fund the private school system in Ireland.  

Like the term ‘poverty’, disadvantage/d is a static noun/adjective where the agents of social injustices are made invisible. If students are disadvantaged someone must be responsible for this; who is responsible?

Myth of merit

Because those from privileged schools and social backgrounds dominate the entry to elite programmes year-on-year (leading ultimately to elite jobs), inequalities are normalised; we take no notice of the patterns, they seem legitimate.

The message is: ‘Sure they got there by their hard work and ability’. Did they? The social scientific evidence suggests otherwise.

There are numerous studies that show that getting high grades and good degrees is heavily dependent on the money invested in a given child/adult over time. The educationally successful are disproportionately drawn from wealthier backgrounds because they have both the economic capital (money) and cultural capital (knowledge of how the education system works, and how and where to maximise competitive advantage for their own children).

Money makes the difference

We know from extensive research conducted by scholars across different countries, and especially Sean Reardon , professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford University, that money invested in children’s education outside of school (in and of itself) is becoming increasingly important in determining success within school.

Wealthier parents (the wealthiest 20%) spend seven times more per child each year on private education outside of school hours than the poorest 20%. Those who are wealthiest use their private wealth to advantage their children outside the school system through private tuition in Ireland too.

No matter how egalitarian our schools are, private wealth can undermine their democratic purposes. We can see this every day though we do not measure its impact systematically.

In every town and village, private grinds are offered by individual teachers (sometimes the same teachers who teach children in class), and by ‘grind schools’ in Leaving Certificate subjects. Expensive language exchange and summer programmes are available to those who can pay to excel in French, Spanish or German especially.

If you study Music and Irish for the Leaving Certificate, you are heavily advantaged in the race for points if your parents can pay for private tuition. This is how it works: the performance part of the Leaving Certificate music examination now counts for 50% of the total grade, but to be sure of getting a higher level H1 or H2 students need to have undertaken music lessons in an instrument privately at a cost of from €30-60 per lesson. The cost can and does run into thousands of euro over several years.

A similar situation applies in relation to Gaeilge. As 40% of the Leaving Certificate Examination (LCE) grade is for spoken Irish, those who can afford to pay for their children to attend the Gaeltacht each year (€1,000 for a 3-week stay) are automatically advantaged.

Almost one-sixth of your final LCE ‘points’ can be reasonably well secured in advance by private investment in two subjects.

The problem is bigger than the Leaving Certificate

Educational credentials are a positional good in a competitive society: by this I mean their value is always relative to what others have in educational terms.

When competitors are unequally resourced, as is the case in Ireland, those with most resources, namely those from well-off middle and upper-class backgrounds, are most likely to perform best.

This is not some ideological standpoint - this is the logical outcome of economic inequalities.

If we really want to address class inequality in education, then we need to challenge the neoliberal capitalist economic model that generates the growing income and wealth inequalities between households in the first instance.

It is these inequalities that feed into injustice in education. They literally ‘frighten’ the middle classes into working systematically, and sometimes frantically, outside of school to advantage their own children.

Fear of losing, or not getting, class advantage is what drives the pressures on children from their parents in the Leaving Certificate. Parents with insider knowledge, money, and time, work actively to ensure their children will not be consigned to the low-waged, temporary, precarious employment they see all around them. Whether we approve of their actions or not, they see this as their job as parents.

But it is not the job of a democratic government to ensure that the wealthiest can perpetuate their class privileges through inheriting excessive private wealth at the expense of precarious, low-waged workers on the one hand, and failing to intervene in educational policies that are blatantly class biased on the other.

Kathleen Lynch is an emeritus professor of equality studies and a full adjunct  professor in the school of education in UCD. She is also a commissioner to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission.  

PRIVATE SUBSIDIES Investigation

Do you want to know why the taxpayer is helping to fund the private school system in Ireland? 

The Noteworthy team wants to do an in-depth investigation into the level of state support available to these schools, not just through teaching salaries but also capital expenditure, grant funding, and charitable tax breaks.

Here’s how to help support this proposal>

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Social Class Status Differences Essay

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Social class is the status of the society in which individuals are classified on basis of political, economic and cultural perspectives. Wealth, income and occupation are the major aspects of economic social classification.

Political social class is characterized by Status and power, while the cultural group is determined by peoples’ lifestyle, education, values and beliefs (Bernstein 126). The economic, political and social classes can further be categorized in to subcategories of upper, middle, working and lower classes depending on one’s position in society.

It is quite essential for each individual in the society to understand the social position in which one belongs to (Bronfenbrenner 412). This will not only help in addressing the different issues that arise in life but also help in building a strong understanding of the societal needs.

Proper understanding of one’s class helps individuals to get fully prepared in facing challenges that come along in tackling daily activities. People who discern their social environment at an early stage in life constantly keep rising from one class to another.

It’s quite clear that social classes bring about inequalities in resources and life expectations. For instance, individuals with power have direct access to material resources compared to their followers.

Such differences cause economic gap between the different groups and may lead to the low group engaging in unethical means such as theft and corruption in order to bridge the gap (Bernstein 127). On the other hand, individuals endorsed with power may also look for alternatives of fighting in order to remain in power as a means of maintaining their status quo.

In understanding the social classes’ one should be keen in noting that; people in the lower social classes are involved in risky, lowly paid jobs which do not have any form of security unlike their counterparts in upper classes who enjoy better paid, secured jobs with access to medical cover (Bronfenbrenne 411).

In most instances, people in the lower class categories provide labor to the upper class; they do so by working as gardeners’ cleaners or any other odd jobs.

Low class individuals in the society lack adequate opportunities to exploit their talents. However, highly motivated individuals can rise to the other classes although they do so with a lot of difficulties (Davis 60).

Education is one way of shifting from one social class to another; children from upper classes have access to good schools and education and as result are able to maintain their class later in life. An educated individual is able to secure a well paying job, accumulate wealth and use the resources he has to gain political power.

The social class also determines the society’s demographics. Many low income earners are likely to stay in proximity to industries (Marshal 30). They reside in poorly constructed houses within noisy environment since they cannot afford better lifestyles (Bronfenbrenne 412).

On the other hand, upper social class individuals prefer to live in private, cool and sparsely populated areas. In addition, people from the low class are more prone to high crime related risks as a result of lack of opportunities and over population. This happens because many of them are unemployed hence hopelessly engage into alcohol and drugs.

Social class also has a very big impact on health status of an individual. Good medical care is only accessed by those who are willing to spend big. The lower class people suffer most because of their inability to access good medical care because of inadequate funds (Krieger 79).

Poor health contributes to low productivity of workers hence poor employment. However, the wealthy and rich are likely to suffer from conditions like obesity and cancer because of the kind of lifestyles they lead. Stress due to low pays, divorce and or conflicts may lead to death.

Differences in cultures, education levels, wealth, income and other aspects of social class in most instances cause discrimination (Marshall 30). For instance, one may be denied an opportunity as a result of being associated to a certain social class. This has given rise to massive corruption in the society and consequent moral degradation.

In social classes, informal and formal groups arise. The groups are mostly created to cultivate value in their groups and work in cooperation to maintain their status (Dahrendorf 12).

The groups also educate members on the opportunities and threats in the environment in addition to providing financial support to each other. Examples of these groups include Sacco’s which arise in the economic class, political parties and cultural groups.

In conclusion, social class differences create competition among different members in the society. Individuals within the lowest social class always work hard to maneuver their way to the next level. Individuals within the highest social classes have a feeling of having made it in life.

It would be crucial for anyone teaching on social classes to keenly study the economic, political and cultural backgrounds of the learners (Bronfenbrenner 420). This is a very sensitive area which needs serious research in order to avoid creating differences among the learners.

Works Cited

Bernstein, Benim. “A sociolinguistic approach to socialization: With some reference to educability.” Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication. 12.6(1972):125-126.

Bronfenbrenner, Uenice. “Socialization and social class through time and space.” Readings in 12.5(1958):400-425. Print

Dahrendorf, Real. Class and class conflict in industrial society .Stanford: Stanford University Press Stanford, 1959. Print.

Davis, Alvis. “Social-class influences upon learning.” social psychology 15.8(1948):56 89. Print.

Krieger, Rowley. “Racism, sexism, and social class: implications for studies of health, disease, and well-being.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 78.7(1993):67-90. Print.

Marshall, Timao. “ Citizenship and social class.” Cambridge 12.2(1950):28-29. Print.

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Social Class and Its Impact on Student Performance

Introduction

Definition and history, impact of social classes on achievement gaps, video voice-over.

Social class is a significant factor among all world populations. Social class is the grouping of people according to wealth, level of education, occupational prestige, income, and sometimes an individual’s social networks. The most common classification includes the upper class, middle class, and lower where the hierarchy stratifies from the richest to the poorest. In the United States, social class impacts many activities and social interactions among the citizens. For example, social classes influence employment, education, access to health care, individual income, transportation, and housing services. Although evidence shows that the rich have more advantages than the other social classes in all aspects, educational policymakers resist accepting that social classes influence academic achievements. Instead, they argue that teachers, learning institutions, and students’ self-drive are responsible for students’ performance. This essay discusses controversial issues regarding the impact of social class on students’ performance, such as economic status, societal expectations, and individual health, which influence students’ performance among minority ethnic groups and white Americans.

Students’ achievement gaps refer to the disparities in academic performance between different groups such as racial, gender, or ethnic communities. Education disparities have a long history in the United States between races and minority ethnic groups. Educational systems measure academic differences by determining achievement gaps by obtaining the average score from a standard test between different races, gender, or ethnic groups. Throughout the years, white students perform better in academics than their black American and Hispanic American counterparts. Research shows that the achievement gaps between Hispanics and blacks were huge in the 1970s, which increased immensely in the 1980s through the 1900s (North et al., 2019). However, in the late 1900s, the achievement gaps came to a stall and began declining considerably in math and literacy skills. Despite the decline, North et al. (2019) note that the percentage gaps are still high at a deviation of more than 40%, which causes a big problem in the education sector.

Educational policymakers argue that teachers and schools are wholly responsible for a student’s performance. However, teachers claim that students learn cognitive and social skills from school and home environments, affecting their performance. Students learn through hard work and emulating their role models from their communities (North et al., 2019). For example, children from high and middle-class white societies get insight from their parent’s achievements, professions, and expectations which drive them to work harder and achieve the same status.

According to teachers, different social classes bring up their children differently, determining their behavior, life expectations, discipline, curiosity, and communication. Children from elite communities are more curious, self-driven, and open to gaining more practical knowledge than children from low-class communities resulting in higher performance.

On the other hand, children from low-class societies whose parents live on simple jobs are more likely to grow differently regarding life expectations and professionalism. Since most black and Hispanic parents work as unprofessional employees who follow instructions without questions, their children are likely to be less curious and self-driven in life (North et al., 2019), affecting their academic performance. However much the teachers may work toward filling the achievement gap between white and black students, social upbringings determine students’ outcomes academically. Therefore, social class plays a significant role in shaping a student’s personality and way of life, reflecting on their performance.

According to educational policymakers, poverty and low income do not impact a student’s performance. A student’s hard work and willingness to learn are enough to perform academically regardless of their financial status. Although this argument holds some truth, teachers argue that income and poverty levels affect students’ outcomes. Financial incapability manifests through inadequate healthcare, poor transport services, poor nutrition, and health hazards in areas of residence, which involve a student’s health. According to teachers, students with health problems have slow cognitive development, poor concentration, and absenteeism, significantly influencing their performance. Compared to white American healthy living environments, most blacks and Hispanics live in poverty-stricken areas that are hazardous to one health (North et al., 2019). Policymakers’ argument that students’ performance depends on teachers and institutions does not consider the effects of social classes on students’ health. Inadequate healthcare and illnesses cause absenteeism and cognitive problems, resulting in slower academic progress among disadvantaged groups, leading to high achievement gaps.

In their arguments, educational policymakers claim that students from black families who earn the same income as white families should register the same academic performance. White parents invest more in their children’s schooling and academics, which influences their performance. On the other hand, teachers argue that the same incomes do not determine parents’ financial status to provide equal student performance resources. North et al. (2019) state that black parents may earn the same as white parents but have different social and financial statuses due to more responsibilities and fewer external assets. Therefore, black parents offer limited resources such as advanced coursework programs and private tutoring to their children’s education than white parents who give their all, affecting students’ performance. Moreover, limited resources hinder admission to expensive and prestigious schools. As a result, black students attend local schools that are not keen on student expectations promoting achievement gaps between social classes.

Despite the controversial arguments, social class plays a significant role in students’ performance. Social classes define the financial status of students, determining their healthcare services, transport, living arrangements, and academic resources that impact their performance. Most white learners come from high and middle-class communities. In contrast, black Americans and Hispanics come from lower-class communities resulting in white students performing better than blacks and Hispanics. Although teachers play a substantial role in students’ performance, social class influences students’ academics and performance standards.

North, E. A., Ryan, A. M., Cortina, K., & Brass, N. R. (2019). Social status and classroom behavior in math and science during early adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 48 (3), 597-608, Web.

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How the Diploma Divide Is Remaking American Politics

Education is at the heart of this country’s many divisions..

Blue America is an increasingly wealthy and well-educated place.

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Americans without college degrees were more likely than university graduates to vote Democratic. But that gap began narrowing in the late 1960s before finally flipping in 2004 .

John F. Kennedy lost college-educated voters by a two-to-one margin yet won the presidency thanks to overwhelming support among white voters without a degree. Sixty years later, our second Catholic president charted a much different path to the White House, losing non-college-educated whites by a two-to-one margin while securing 60 percent of the college-educated vote. The latest New York Times /Siena poll of the 2022 midterms showed this pattern holding firm, with Democrats winning 55 percent of voters with bachelor’s degrees but only 39 percent of those without.

A more educated Democratic coalition is, naturally, a more affluent one. In every presidential election from 1948 to 2012, white voters in the top 5 percent of America’s income distribution were more Republican than those in the bottom 95 percent. Now, the opposite is true: Among America’s white majority, the rich voted to the left of the middle class and the poor in 2016 and 2020, while the poor voted to the right of the middle class and the rich.

In political-science parlance, the collapse of the New Deal–era alignment — in which voters’ income levels strongly predicted their partisan preference — is often referred to as “class dealignment.” The increasing tendency for politics to divide voters along educational lines, meanwhile, is known as “education polarization.”

There are worse things for a political coalition to be than affluent or educated. Professionals vote and donate at higher rates than blue-collar workers. But college graduates also comprise a minority of the electorate — and an underrepresented minority at that. America’s electoral institutions all give disproportionate influence to parts of the country with low levels of educational attainment. And this is especially true of the Senate . Therefore, if the coalitional trends of the past half-century continue unabated — and Democrats keep gaining college-educated votes at the expense of working-class ones — the party will find itself locked out of federal power. Put differently, such a development would put an increasingly authoritarian GOP on the glide path to political dominance.

And unless education polarization is substantially reversed , progressives are likely to continue seeing their reform ambitions pared back sharply by Congress’s upper chamber, even when Democrats manage to control it.

These realities have generated a lively intra-Democratic debate over the causes and implications of class dealignment. To some pundits , consultants, and data journalists , the phenomenon’s fundamental cause is the cultural divide between educated professionals and the working class. In their telling, college graduates in general — and Democratic college graduates in particular — tend to have different social values, cultural sensibilities, and issue priorities than the median non-college-educated voter. As the New York Times ’s Nate Cohn puts the point, college graduates tend to be more cosmopolitan and culturally liberal, report higher levels of social trust, and are more likely to “attribute racial inequality, crime, and poverty to complex structural and systemic problems” rather than “individualist and parochial explanations.”

What’s more, since blue America’s journalists, politicians, and activists are overwhelmingly college graduates, highly educated liberals exert disproportionate influence over their party’s actions and identity. Therefore, as the Democrats’ well-credentialed wing has swelled, the party’s image and ideological positioning have grown more reflective of the professional class’s distinct tastes — and thus less appealing to the electorate’s working-class majority.

This theory does not sit well with all Democratic journalists, politicians, and activists. Some deny the existence of a diploma divide on cultural values, while others insist on its limited political salience. Many progressives attribute class dealignment to America’s pathological racial politics and/or the Democrats’ failures of economic governance . In this account, the New Deal coalition was unmade by a combination of a backlash to Black Americans’ growing prominence in Democratic politics and the Democratic Party’s failures to prevent its former working-class base from suffering decades of stagnant living standards and declining life expectancy .

An appreciation of these developments is surely indispensable for understanding class dealignment in the United States. But they don’t tell the whole story. Education polarization is not merely an American phenomenon; it is a defining feature of contemporary politics in nearly every western democracy . It is therefore unlikely that our nation’s white-supremacist history can fully explain the development. And though center-left parties throughout the West have shared some common failings, these inadequacies cannot tell us why many working-class voters have not merely dropped out of politics but rather begun voting for parties even more indifferent to their material interests.

In my view, education polarization cannot be understood without a recognition of the values divide between educated professionals and working people in the aggregate. That divide is rooted in each class’s disparate ways of life, economic imperatives, socialization experiences, and levels of material security. By itself, the emergence of this gap might not have been sufficient to trigger class dealignment, but its adverse political implications have been greatly exacerbated by the past half-century of inequitable growth, civic decline, and media fragmentation.

The college-educated population has distinct ideological tendencies and psychological sensibilities.

Educated professionals tend to be more socially liberal than the general public. In fact, the correlation between high levels of educational attainment and social liberalism is among the most robust in political science. As early as the 1950s, researchers documented the tendency of college graduates to espouse more progressive views than the general public on civil liberties and gender roles. In the decades since, as the political scientist Elizabeth Simon writes , this correlation has held up with “remarkable geographical and temporal consistency.” Across national boundaries and generations, voters with college degrees have been more likely than those without to support legal abortion, LGBTQ+ causes, the rights of racial minorities, and expansive immigration. They are also more likely to hold “post-material” policy priorities — which is to say, to prioritize issues concerning individual autonomy, cultural values, and big-picture social goals above those concerning one’s immediate material and physical security. This penchant is perhaps best illustrated by the highly educated’s distinctively strong support for environmental causes, even in cases when ecological preservation comes at a cost to economic growth.

Underlying these disparate policy preferences are distinct psychological profiles. The college educated are more likely to espouse moral values and attitudes associated with the personality trait “ openness to experience .” High “openness” individuals are attracted to novelty, skeptical of traditional authority, and prize personal freedom and cultural diversity. “Closed” individuals, by contrast, have an aversion to the unfamiliar and are therefore attracted to moral principles that promote certainty, order, and security. Virtually all human beings fall somewhere between these two ideal types. But the college educated as a whole are closer to the “open” end of the continuum than the general public is.

All of these distinctions between more- and less-educated voters are probabilistic, not absolute. There are Catholic theocrats with Harvard Ph.D.’s and anarchists who dropped out of high school. A nation the size of the U.S. is surely home to many millions of working-class social liberals and well-educated reactionaries. Political attitudes do not proceed automatically from any demographic characteristic, class position, or psychological trait. At the individual level, ideology is shaped by myriad historical inheritances and social experiences.

And yet, if people can come by socially liberal, “high openness” politics from any walk of life, they are much more likely to do so if that walk cuts across a college campus. (And, of course, they are even more likely to harbor this distinct psychological and ideological profile if they graduate from college and then choose to become professionally involved in Democratic politics.)

The path to the professional class veers left.

There are a few theoretical explanations for this. One holds that spending your late adolescence on a college campus tends to socialize you into cultural liberalism: Through some combination of increased exposure to people from a variety of geographic backgrounds, or the iconoclastic ethos of a liberal-arts education, or the predominantly left-of-center university faculty , or the substantive content of curricula, people tend to leave college with a more cosmopolitan and “open” worldview than they had upon entering.

Proving this theory is difficult since doing so requires controlling for selection effects. Who goes to college is not determined by random chance. The subset of young people who have the interests, aptitudes, and opportunities necessary for pursuing higher education have distinct characteristics long before they show up on campus. Some social scientists contend that such “selection effects” entirely explain the distinct political tendencies of college graduates. After all, the “high openness” personality trait is associated with higher IQs and more interest in academics. So perhaps attending college doesn’t lead people to develop culturally liberal sensibilities so much as developing culturally liberal sensibilities leads people to go to college.

Some research has tried to account for this possibility. Political scientists in the United Kingdom have managed to control for the preadult views and backgrounds of college graduates by exploiting surveys that tracked the same respondents through adolescence and into adulthood. Two recent analyses of such data have found that the college experience does seem to directly increase a person’s likelihood of becoming more socially liberal in their 20s than they were in their teens.

A separate study from the U.S. sought to control for the effects of familial background and childhood experiences by examining the disparate “sociopolitical” attitudes of sibling pairs in which one went to college while the other did not. It found that attending college was associated with greater “support for civil liberties and egalitarian gender-role beliefs.”

Other recent research , however, suggests that even these study designs may fail to control for all of the background factors that bias college attendees toward liberal views before they arrive on campus. So we have some good evidence that attending college directly makes people more culturally liberal, but that evidence is not entirely conclusive.

Yet if one posits that higher education does not produce social liberals but merely attracts them, a big theoretical problem remains: Why has the population of social liberals increased in tandem with that of college graduates?

The proportion of millennials who endorse left-wing views on issues of race, gender, immigration , and the environment is higher than the proportion of boomers who do so. And such views are more prevalent within the baby-boom generation than they were among the Silent Generation. This cannot be explained merely as a consequence of America’s burgeoning racial diversity, since similar generational patterns have been observed in European nations with lower rates of ethnic change. But the trend is consistent with another component of demographic drift: Each successive generation has had a higher proportion of college graduates than its predecessor. Between 1950 and 2019, the percentage of U.S. adults with bachelor’s degrees increased from 4 percent to 33 percent.  

Perhaps rising college attendance did not directly cause the “high-openness,” post-material, culturally progressive proportion of the population to swell. But then, what did?

One possibility is that, even if mass college attendance does not directly promote the development of “high openness” values, the mass white-collar economy does. If socially liberal values are well suited to the demands and lifeways inherent to professional employment in a globally integrated economy, then, as such employment expands, we would expect a larger share of the population to adopt socially liberal values. And there is indeed reason to think the professional vocation lends itself to social liberalism.

Entering the professional class often requires not only a four-year degree, but also, a stint in graduate school or a protracted period of overwork and undercompensation at the lowest ranks of one’s field. This gives the class’s aspirants a greater incentive to postpone procreation until later in life than the median worker. That in turn may give them a heightened incentive to favor abortion rights and liberal sexual mores.

The demands of the professional career may influence value formation in other ways. As a team of political scientists from Harvard and the University of Bonn argued in a 2020 paper , underlying the ideological divide between social liberals and conservatives may be a divergence in degrees of “moral universalism,” i.e., “the extent to which people’s altruism and trust remain constant as social distance increases.” Conservatives tend to feel stronger obligations than liberals to their own kin and neighbors and their religious, ethnic, and racial groups. Liberals, by contrast, tend to spread their altruism and trust thinner across a wider sphere of humanity; they are less compelled by the particularist obligations of inherited group loyalties and more apt to espouse a universalist ethos in which all individuals are of equal moral concern, irrespective of their group attachments.

Given that pursuing a professional career often requires leaving one’s native community and entering meritocratic institutions that are ideologically and legally committed to the principle that group identities matter less than individual aptitudes, the professional vocation may favor the development of a morally universalistic outlook — and thus more progressive views on questions of anti-discrimination and weaker identification with inherited group identities.

Further, in a globalized era, white-collar workers will often need to work with colleagues on other continents and contemplate social and economic developments in far-flung places. This may encourage both existing and aspiring professionals to develop more cosmopolitan outlooks.

Critically, parents who are themselves professionals — or who aspire for their children to secure a place in the educated, white-collar labor force — may seek to inculcate these values in their kids from a young age. For example, my own parents sent me to a magnet elementary school where students were taught Japanese starting in kindergarten. This curriculum was designed to appeal to parents concerned with their children’s capacity to thrive in the increasingly interconnected (and, in the early 1990s American imagination, increasingly Japanese-dominated) economy of tomorrow.

In this way, the expansion of the white-collar sector may increase the prevalence of “high-openness” cosmopolitan traits and values among rising generations long before they arrive on campus.

More material security, more social liberalism.

Ronald Inglehart’s theory of “ cultural evolution ” provides a third, complementary explanation for both the growing prevalence of social liberalism over the past half-century and for that ideology’s disproportionate popularity among the college educated.

In Inglehart’s account, people who experience material security in youth tend to develop distinctive values and preferences from those who do not: If childhood teaches you to take your basic material needs for granted, you’re more likely to develop culturally progressive values and post-material policy priorities.

Inglehart first formulated this theory in 1971 to explain the emerging cultural gap between the baby boomers and their parents. He noted that among western generations born before World War II, very large percentages had known hunger at some point in their formative years. The Silent Generation, for its part, had come of age in an era of economic depression and world wars. Inglehart argued that such pervasive material and physical insecurity was unfavorable soil for social liberalism: Under conditions of scarcity, human beings have a strong inclination to defer to established authority and tradition, to distrust out-groups, and to prize order and material security above self-expression and individual autonomy.

But westerners born into the postwar boom encountered a very different world from the Depression-wracked, war-torn one of their parents, let alone the cruel and unforgiving one encountered by common agriculturalists since time immemorial. Their world was one of rapid and widespread income growth. And these unprecedentedly prosperous conditions engendered a shift in the postwar generation’s values: When the boomers reached maturity, an exceptionally large share of the cohort evinced post-material priorities and espoused tolerance for out-groups, support for gender equality, concern for the environment, and antipathy for social hierarchies.

Since this transformation in values wasn’t rooted merely in the passage of time — but rather in the experience of abundance — it did not impact all social classes equally. Educated professionals are disproportionately likely to have had stable, middle-class childhoods. Thus, across the West, the post-material minority was disproportionately composed of college graduates in general and elite ones in particular. As Inglehart reported in 1981 , “among those less than 35 years old with jobs that lead to top management and top civil-service posts, Post-Materialists outnumber Materialists decisively: their numerical preponderance here is even greater than it is among students.”  

As with most big-picture models of political development, Inglehart’s theory is reductive and vulnerable to myriad objections. But his core premise — that, all else being equal, material abundance favors social liberalism while scarcity favors the opposite — has much to recommend it. As the World Values Survey has demonstrated, a nation’s degree of social liberalism (a.k.a. “self-expression values”) tightly correlates with its per-capita income. Meanwhile, as nations become wealthier, each successive generation tends to become more socially liberal than the previous one.

Critically, the World Values Survey data does not show an ineluctable movement toward ever-greater levels of social liberalism. Rather, when nations backslide economically, their populations’ progressivism declines. In the West, recessions have tended to reduce the prevalence of post-material values and increase support for xenophobic parties. But the relationship between material security and cultural liberalism is demonstrated most starkly by the experience of ex-communist states, many of which suffered a devastating collapse in living standards following the Soviet Union’s fall. In Russia and much of Eastern Europe, popular support for culturally progressive values plummeted around 1990 and has remained depressed ever since.

Inglehart’s theory offers real insights. As an account of education polarization, however, it presents a bit of a puzzle: If material security is the key driver of social liberalism, why have culture wars bifurcated electorates along lines of education instead of income? Put differently: Despite the material security provided by a high salary, when one controls for educational attainment, having a high income remains strongly associated with voting for conservatives.

One way to resolve this tension is to stipulate that the first two theories of education polarization we examined are also right: While material security is conducive to social liberalism, the college experience and demands of professional-class vocations are perhaps even more so. Thus, high-income voters who did not go to college will tend to be less socially liberal than those who did.

Separately, earning a high income is strongly associated with holding conservative views on fiscal policy. Therefore, even if the experience of material security biases high-income voters toward left-of-center views on cultural issues, their interest in low taxes may nevertheless compel them to vote for right-wing parties.

Voters with high levels of education but low incomes, meanwhile, are very often children of the middle class who made dumb career choices like, say, going into journalism. Such voters’ class backgrounds would theoretically bias them toward a socially liberal orientation, while their meager earnings would give them little reason to value conservative fiscal policy. Perhaps for this reason, “ high-education low-income voters ” are among the most reliably left-wing throughout the western world.

In any case, whatever qualifications and revisions we would wish to make to Inglehart’s theory, one can’t deny its prescience. In 1971, Inglehart forecast that intergenerational value change would redraw the lines of political conflict throughout the West. In his telling, the emergence of a novel value orientation that was disproportionately popular with influential elites would naturally shift the terrain of political conflict. And it would do so in a manner that undermined materialist, class-based voting: If conventional debates over income distribution pulled at the affluent right and the working-class left, the emerging cultural disputes pulled each in the opposite direction.

This proved to be, in the words of Gabriel Almond, “one of the few examples of successful prediction in political science.”

When the culture wars moved to the center of politics, the college educated moved left.

Whether we attribute the social liberalism of college graduates to their experiences on campus, their class’s incentive structures, their relative material security, or a combination of all three, a common set of predictions about western political development follows.

First, we would expect to see the political salience of cultural conflicts start to increase in the 1960s and ’70s as educated professionals became a mass force in western politics. Second, relatedly, we would expect that the historic correlation between having a college degree and voting for the right would start gradually eroding around the same time, owing to the heightened prominence of social issues.

Finally, we would expect education polarization to be most pronounced in countries where (1) economic development is most advanced (and thus the professional sector is most expansive) and (2) left-wing and right-wing parties are most sharply divided on cultural questions.

In their paper “Changing Political Cleavages in 21 Western Democracies, 1948–2020,” Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty confirm all of these expectations.

The paper analyzes nearly every manifesto (a.k.a. “platform”) put forward by left-wing and right-wing parties in the past 300 elections. As anticipated by Inglehart, the researchers found that right-wing and left-wing parties began to develop distinct positions on “sociocultural” issues in the 1970s and that these distinctions grew steadily more profound over the ensuing 50 years. Thus, the salience of cultural issues did indeed increase just as college graduates became an electorally significant demographic.

As cultural conflict became more prominent, educated professionals became more left-wing. Controlling for other variables, in the mid-20th century, having a college diploma made one more likely to vote for parties of the right. By 2020, in virtually all of the western democracies, this relationship had inverted.

Some popular narratives attribute this realignment to discrete historical events, such as the Cold War’s end, China’s entry into the WTO, or the 2008 crash. But the data show no sudden reversal in education’s political significance. Instead, the authors write, the West saw “a very progressive, continuous reversal of educational divides, which unfolded decades before any of these events took place and has carried on uninterruptedly until today.” This finding is consistent with the notion that class dealignment is driven by gradual changes in western societies’ demographic and economic characteristics, such as the steady expansion of the professional class.

The paper provides further support for the notion that education polarization is a by-product of economic development: The three democracies where college-educated voters have not moved sharply to the left in recent decades — Ireland, Portugal, and Spain — are all relative latecomers to industrialization.

Finally, and perhaps most important, the authors established a strong correlation between “sociocultural polarization” — the degree to which right-wing and left-wing parties emphasize sharply divergent cultural positions — and education polarization. In other words: Countries where parties are highly polarized on social issues tend to have electorates that are highly polarized along educational lines.

It seems reasonable then to conclude (1) that there really is a cultural divide between educated professionals and the working class in the aggregate and (2) that this gap has been a key driver of class dealignment. Indeed, if we accept the reality of the diploma divide, then an increase of education-based voting over the past 50 years would seem almost inevitable: If you have two social groups with distinct cultural values and one group goes from being 4 percent of the electorate to 35 percent of it, debates about those values will probably become more politically prominent.

And of course, mass higher education wasn’t the only force increasing the salience of social conflict in the West over the past half-century. If economic development increased the popularity of “post-material” values, it also made it easier for marginalized groups to contest traditional hierarchies. As job opportunities for women expanded, they became less dependent on the patriarchal family for material security and thus were more liable to challenge it. As racial minorities secured a foothold in the middle class, they had more resources with which to fight discrimination.

And yet, if an increase in sociocultural polarization — and thus in education polarization — is a foregone conclusion, the magnitude of these shifts can’t be attributed to the existence of cultural divides alone.

Rather, transformations in the economic, civic, and media landscapes of western society since the 1970s have increased the salience and severity of the diploma divide.

When the postwar bargain collapsed, the center-left failed to secure workers a new deal.

To polarize an electorate around cultural conflicts rooted in education, you don’t just need to increase the salience of social issues. You also need to reduce the salience of material disputes rooted in class. Alas, the economic developments of the past 50 years managed to do both.

The class-based alignment that defined western politics in the mid-20th century emerged from a particular set of economic conditions. In the early stages of industrialization, various factors had heightened the class consciousness of wage laborers. Such workers frequently lived in densely settled, class-segregated neighborhoods in the immediate vicinity of large labor-intensive plants. This close proximity cultivated solidarity, as divisions between the laborer’s working and social worlds were few. And the vast scale of industrial enterprises abetted organizing drives, as trade unions could rapidly gain scale by winning over a single shop.

By encouraging their members to view politics through the lens of class and forcing political elites to reckon with workers’ demands, strong trade unions helped to keep questions of income distribution and workers’ rights at the center of political debate and the forefront of voters’ minds. In so doing, they also helped to win western workers in general — and white male ones in particular — unprecedented shares of national income.

But this bargain between business and labor had always been contingent on robust growth. In the postwar era of rising productivity, it was possible for profits and wages to increase in tandem. But in the 1970s, western economies came under stress. Rising energy costs and global competition thinned profit margins, rendering business owners more hostile to labor’s demands both within the shop and in politics. Stagflation — the simultaneous appearance of high unemployment and high inflation — gave an opening to right-wing critics of the postwar order, who argued that the welfare state and pro-labor macroeconomic policies had sapped productivity.

Meanwhile, various long-term economic trends began undermining industrial unionism. Automation inevitably reduced the labor intensity of factories in the West. The advent of the shipping container eased the logistical burdens of globalizing production, while the industrialization of low-wage developing countries increased the incentives for doing so. Separately, as western consumers grew more affluent, they began spending less of their income on durable goods and more on services like health care (one needs only so many toasters, but the human desire for greater longevity and physical well-being is nigh-insatiable). These developments reduced both the economic leverage and the political weight of industrial workers. And since western service sectors had lower rates of unionization, deindustrialization weakened organized labor.

All this presented center-left parties with a difficult challenge. In the face of deindustrialization, an increasingly anti-labor corporate sector, an increasingly conservative economic discourse, an embattled union movement, and a globalizing economy, such parties needed to formulate new models for achieving shared prosperity. And they had to do so while managing rising cultural tensions within their coalitions.

They largely failed.

Countering the postindustrial economy’s tendencies toward inequality would have required radical reforms. Absent policies promoting the unionization of the service sector, deindustrialization inevitably weakened labor. Absent drastic changes in the allocation of posttax income, automation and globalization redistributed economic gains away from “low skill” workers and toward the most productive — or well-situated — professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs.

The United States had more power than any western nation to standardize such reforms and establish a relatively egalitarian postindustrial model. Yet the Democratic Party could muster neither the political will nor the imagination to do so. Instead, under Jimmy Carter, it acquiesced to various policies that reinforced the postindustrial economy’s tendencies toward inequality, while outsourcing key questions of economic management to financial markets and the Federal Reserve. The Reagan administration took this inegalitarian and depoliticized model of economic governance to new extremes. And to highly varying degrees, its inequitable and market-fundamentalist creed influenced the policies of future U.S. administrations and other western governments.

As a result, the past five decades witnessed a great divergence in the economic fortunes of workers with and without college diplomas, while the western working class (a.k.a. the “lower middle class”) became the primary “losers” of globalization .

The center-left parties’ failures to avert a decline in the economic security and status of ordinary workers discredited them with much of their traditional base. And their failure to reinvigorate organized labor undermined the primary institutions that politicize workers into a progressive worldview. These shortcomings, combined with the market’s increasingly dominant role in economic management, reduced the political salience of left-right divides on economic policy. This in turn gave socially conservative working-class voters fewer reasons to vote for center-left parties and gave affluent social liberals fewer reasons to oppose them. In western nations where organized labor remains relatively strong (such as Norway, Sweden, and Finland), education polarization has been relatively mild, while in those countries where it is exceptionally weak (such as the United States), the phenomenon has been especially pronounced.

Finally, the divergent economic fortunes of workers and professionals might have abetted education polarization in one other way: Given that experiencing abundance encourages social liberalism — while experiencing scarcity discourages it — the past half-century of inequitable growth might have deepened cultural divisions between workers with degrees and those without.

The professionalization of civil society estranged the left from its working-class base.

While the evolution of western economies increased the class distance between college graduates and other workers, the evolution of western civil societies increased the social distance between each group.

Back in the mid-20th century, the college educated still constituted a tiny minority of western populations, while mass-membership institutions — from trade unions to fraternal organizations to political parties — still dominated civic life. In that context, an educated professional who wished to exercise political influence often needed to join a local chapter of a cross-class civic association or political party and win election to a leadership position within that organization by securing the confidence of its membership.

That changed once educated professionals became a mass constituency in their own right. As the college-educated population ballooned and concentrated itself within urban centers, it became easier for interest groups to swing elections and pressure lawmakers without securing working-class support. At the same time, the proliferation of “knowledge workers” set off an arms race between interest and advocacy groups looking to influence national legislation and election outcomes. Job opportunities for civic-minded professionals in think tanks, nonprofits, and foundations proliferated. And thanks to growing pools of philanthropic money and the advent of direct-mail fundraising, these organizations could sustain themselves without recruiting an active mass membership.

Thus, the professional’s path to political influence dramatically changed. Instead of working one’s way up through close-knit local groups — and bending them toward one’s political goals through persuasion — professionals could join (or donate to) nationally oriented advocacy groups already aligned with their preferences, which could then advance their policy aims by providing legislators with expert guidance and influencing public opinion through media debates.

As the political scientist Theda Skocpol demonstrates in her book Diminished Democracy , college graduates began defecting from mass-membership civic organizations in the 1970s, in an exodus that helped precipitate their broader decline.

Combined with the descent of organized labor, the collapse of mass participation in civic groups and political parties untethered the broad left from working-class constituencies. As foundation-funded NGOs displaced trade unions in the progressive firmament, left-wing parties became less directly accountable to their less-educated supporters. This made such parties more liable to embrace the preferences and priorities of educated professionals over those of the median working-class voter.

Meanwhile, in the absence of a thriving civic culture, voters became increasingly reliant on the mass media for their political information.

Today’s media landscape is fertile terrain for right-wing populism.

The dominant media technology of the mid-20th century — broadcast television — favored oligopoly. Given the exorbitant costs of mounting a national television network in that era, the medium was dominated by a small number of networks, each with an incentive to appeal to a broad audience. This discouraged news networks from cultivating cultural controversy while empowering them to establish a broadly shared information environment.

Cable and the internet have molded a radically different media landscape. Today, news outlets compete in a hypersaturated attentional market that encourages both audience specialization and sensationalism. In a world where consumers have abundant infotainment options, voters who read at a graduate-school level and those who read at an eighth-grade level are unlikely to favor the same content. And the same is true of voters with liberal and conservative sensibilities — especially since the collapse of a common media ecosystem leads ideologues to occupy disparate factual universes. The extraordinary nature of today’s media ecology is well illustrated by this chart from Martin Gurri’s book, The Revolt of the Public :

This information explosion abets education polarization for straightforward reasons: Since the college educated and non-college educated have distinct tastes in media, in a highly competitive attentional market, they will patronize different outlets and accept divergent facts.

Further, in the specific economic and social context we’ve been examining, the modern media environment is fertile terrain for reactionary entrepreneurs who wish to cultivate grievance against the professional elite. After all, as we’ve seen, that elite (1) subscribes to some values that most working-class people reject, (2) commandeers a wildly disproportionate share of national income and economic status, and (3) dominates the leadership of major political parties and civic groups to an unprecedented degree.

The political efficacy of such right-wing “populist” programming has been repeatedly demonstrated. Studies have found that exposure to Fox News increases Republican vote share and that the expansion of broadband internet into rural areas leads to higher levels of partisan hostility and lower levels of ticket splitting (i.e., more ideologically consistent voting) as culturally conservative voters gain access to more ideologically oriented national news reporting, commentary, and forums.

What is to be done?

The idea that education polarization arises from deep structural tendencies in western society may inspire a sense of powerlessness. And the notion that it emerges in part from a cultural divide between professionals and working people may invite ideological discomfort, at least among well-educated liberals.

But the fact that some center-left parties have managed to retain more working-class support than others suggests that the Democrats have the capacity to broaden (or narrow) their coalition. Separately, the fact that college-educated liberals have distinct social values does not require us to forfeit them.

The commentators most keen to acknowledge the class dimensions of the culture wars typically aim to discredit the left by doing so. Right-wing polemicists often suggest that progressives’ supposedly compassionate social preferences are mere alibis for advancing the professional class’s material interests. But such arguments are almost invariably weak. Progressive social views may be consonant with professional-class interests, but they typically represent attempts to universalize widely held ideals of freedom and equality. The college educated’s cosmopolitan inclinations are also adaptive for a world that is unprecedentedly interconnected and interdependent and in which population asymmetries between the rich and developing worlds create opportunities for mutual gain through migration , if only xenophobia can be overcome. And of course, in an era of climate change, the professional class’s strong concern for the environment is more than justified.

Nevertheless, professional-class progressives must recognize that our social values are not entirely unrelated to our class position. They are not an automatic by-product of affluence and erudition, nor the exclusive property of the privileged. But humans living in rich, industrialized nations are considerably more likely to harbor these values than those in poor, agrarian ones. And Americans who had the privilege of spending their late adolescence at institutions of higher learning are more likely to embrace social liberalism than those who did not.

The practical implications of this insight are debatable. It is plausible that Democrats may be able to gain working-class vote share by moderating on some social issues. But the precise electoral payoff of any single concession to popular opinion is deeply uncertain. Voters’ conceptions of each party’s ideological positioning are often informed less by policy details than by partisan stereotypes. And the substantive costs of moderation — both for the welfare of vulnerable constituencies and the long-term health of the progressive project — can be profound. At various points in the past half-century, it might have been tactically wise for Democrats to distance themselves from the demands of organized labor. But strategically, sacrificing the health of a key partisan institution to the exigencies of a single election cycle is deeply unwise. Meanwhile, in the U.S. context, the “mainstream” right has staked out some cultural positions that are profoundly unpopular with all social classes . In 2022, it is very much in the Democratic Party’s interest to increase the political salience of abortion rights.

In any case, exactly how Democrats should balance the necessity of keeping the GOP out of power with the imperative to advocate for progressive issue positions is something on which earnest liberals can disagree.

The case for progressives to be more cognizant of the diploma divide when formulating our messaging and policy priorities, however, seems clearer.

Education polarization can be self-reinforcing. As left-wing civic life has drifted away from mass-membership institutions and toward the ideologically self-selecting circles of academia, nonprofits, and the media, the left’s sensitivity to the imperatives of majoritarian politics has dulled. In some respects, the incentives for gaining status and esteem within left-wing subcultures are diametrically opposed to the requirements of coalition building. In the realm of social media, it can be advantageous to make one’s policy ideas sound more radical and/or threatening to popular values than they actually are. Thus, proposals for drastically reforming flawed yet popular institutions are marketed as plans for their “abolition,” while some advocates for reproductive rights insist that they are not merely “pro-choice” but “ pro-abortion ” (as though their objective were not to maximize bodily autonomy but rather the incidence of abortion itself, a cause that would seemingly require limiting access to contraception).

Meanwhile, the rhetoric necessary for cogently theorizing social problems within academia — and that fit for effectively selling policy reforms to a mass audience — is quite different. Political-science research indicates that theoretical abstractions tend to leave most voters cold. Even an abstraction as accessible as “inequality” resonates less with ordinary people than simply saying that the rich have too much money . Yet Democratic politicians have nevertheless taken to peppering their speeches with abstract academic terms such as structural racism .

Relatedly, in the world of nonprofits, policy wonks are often encouraged to foreground the racial implications of race-neutral redistributive policies that disproportionately benefit nonwhite constituencies. Although it is important for policy design to account for any latent racial biases in universal programs, there is reason to believe that, in a democracy with a 70 percent white electorate and widespread racial resentment, it is unwise for Democratic politicians to suggest that broadly beneficial programs primarily aid minority groups.

On the level of priority setting, it seems important for college-educated liberals to be conscious of the fact that “post-material” concerns resonate more with us than with the general public. This is especially relevant for climate strategy. Poll results and election outcomes both indicate that working-class voters are far more sensitive to the threat of rising energy prices than to that of climate change. Given that reality, the most politically viable approach to reducing emissions is likely to expedite the development and deployment of clean-energy technologies rather than deterring energy consumption through higher prices. In practice, this means prioritizing the build-out of green infrastructure over the obstruction of fossil-fuel extraction.

Of course, narrowing the social distance between college-educated liberals and working people would be even better than merely finessing it. The burgeoning unionization of white-collar professions and the growing prominence of downwardly mobile college graduates in working-class labor struggles are both encouraging developments on this front. Whatever Democrats can do to facilitate labor organizing and increase access to higher education will simultaneously advance social justice and improve the party’s long-term electoral prospects.

Finally, the correlation between material security and social liberalism underscores the urgency of progressive economic reform. Shared prosperity can be restored only by increasing the social wage of ordinary workers through some combination of unionization, sectoral bargaining, wage subsidies, and social-welfare expansion. To some extent, this represents a chicken-and-egg problem: Radical economic reforms may be a necessary precondition for the emergence of a broad progressive majority, yet a broad progressive majority is itself a precondition for radical reform.

Nevertheless, in wealthy, deep-blue states such as New York and California, Democrats have the majorities necessary for establishing a progressive economic model. At the moment, artificial constraints on the housing supply , clean-energy production, and other forms of development are sapping blue states’ economic potential . If such constraints could be overcome, the resulting economic gains would simultaneously increase working people’s living standards and render state-level social-welfare programs easier to finance. Perhaps the starting point for such a political revolution is for more-affluent social liberals to recognize that their affinity for exclusionary housing policies and aversion to taxation undermines their cultural values.

Our understanding of education polarization remains provisional. And all proposals for addressing it remain open to debate. The laws of political science are more conjectural than those of physics, and even perfect insight into political reality cannot settle disputes rooted in ideology.

But effective political engagement requires unblinkered vision. The Democratic Party’s declining support among working-class voters is a serious problem. If Democrats consider only ideologically convenient explanations for that problem, our intellectual comfort may come at the price of political power.

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Science, social studies classes can help young English-learning students learn to read and write in English

by Joey Pitchford, North Carolina State University

A new study finds that science and social studies classes may also help young students learn English, even when those classes include difficult and technical vocabulary. The paper is published in the Journal of Educational Psychology .

The study, which observed first- and second-grade students in 30 elementary schools in North Carolina, encouraged teachers to keep their English-learning students in class during science and social studies lessons. Science and social studies textbooks in those grades are often relatively technical and difficult for students, so traditional teaching methods in North Carolina encourage teachers to remove English-learning students from those content classes to focus on their language skills instead.

By creating a 10-week literacy program—known as a Tier 1 intervention—which kept English-learners in science and social studies classes, researchers found that those students saw improvements in their ability to write argumentative essays and use new academic vocabulary. The study highlights the importance of giving English-learners access to academic content, said Jackie Relyea, corresponding author of the study and assistant professor of literacy education at North Carolina State University.

"This study shows how important it is to provide equitable opportunities for English-learners to build knowledge in science and history, and to apply that knowledge through informational texts alongside their peers," Relyea said. "What we found was that when English-learners have access to content-rich literacy instruction, they develop content knowledge as well as language, reading comprehension, and writing skills."

The program used methods like interactive read-alouds, collaborative research and concept mapping to build students' vocabulary and understanding of complex topics. Concept mapping refers to using diagrams or similar visual aids to depict connections between ideas.

Significantly, the study found that English-learners had similar levels of improvement in science and social studies vocabulary and argumentative writing as their English-proficient classmates across the 10-week program. Notably, the intervention did not lead to negative results elsewhere, which supports the idea that English-learning students can attend more complex classes without falling behind. This further suggests that content-rich literacy instruction may help narrow the achievement gap between English-learners and their peers.

The intervention also modified classes to cover individual subjects for longer. That way, Relyea said, English-learners could get comfortable with a subject early on and then continue to get value from that knowledge later.

"One thing we noticed is the importance of using coherent text sets that focus on a single topic. In more traditional literacy instruction, our study found that topics tended to change quickly and there wasn't always a consistent throughline that the students could grab on to," she said.

"By focusing on similar subjects for longer, kids can dig deeper and develop more in-depth knowledge. It may be challenging at first, but when students encounter the same new words day after day, they become familiar with them and expand their vocabulary network. Staying on a thematic unit for longer periods also helps them become experts in the subject matter, which greatly enhances their vocabulary and comprehension skills."

The study challenges widely held assumptions about English-learners' academic capabilities, and highlights their readiness to engage with complex subject material despite their developing English proficiency. Relyea said that further research into incorporating small-group supplemental instruction could be valuable, potentially enhancing the effectiveness of the program even further.

Journal information: Journal of Educational Psychology

Provided by North Carolina State University

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Where Harris stands on Israel, abortion, climate change, education and the economy

[Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misstated Harris' proposed 2019 climate plan investment levels. The correct estimate is nearly seven times more than Biden's current proposal.]

Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as the Democratic party’s presidential frontrunner after Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid Sunday.

Most Democrats have backed Harris, who announced her 2024 campaign for president shortly after Biden penned a letter explaining his decision to exit the 2024 race. Depending on who you ask, Harris is viewed as a moderate or a progressive reformer.

A former prosecutor, Harris was elected San Francisco’s district attorney with a “tough on crime” message in 2003 and worked in that role for seven years. She became the state’s attorney general in 2011 and served until 2017, when she was elected to represent California in the U.S. Senate.

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More: Election 2024 live updates: Endorsements rush in for Harris; Trump attacks begin

Harris launched her own unsuccessful presidential campaign at a rally in her hometown of Oakland, California in 2019. She dropped her bid for the White House and joined President Joe Biden’s ticket in August the following year. In 2021, she was sworn in as vice president.

Decades in the public spotlight and on the public record, here is what we know about where Harris stands on key issues:

Foreign Policy

As Biden’s second-in-command, Harris has largely stood behind his foreign policy positions, but there are signs she could be tougher on Israel over the war in Gaza than the president.

Harris has not given reason to believe she will deviate much from Biden on issues relating to China , for example. She is also unlikely to sway from supporting Ukraine. Harris said earlier this year that Russia has committed “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine over the last two years.

Harris has not directly opposed Biden’s staunch support for Israel, but has expressed sympathy for the more than 38,000 Palestinian lives lost during the conflict. She was one of the first high-profile members of his administration to call for an immediate temporary cease-fire in March. She acknowledged the “immense scale of suffering” in Gaza and said the Israel-Hamas war is a “humanitarian catastrophe” for innocent civilians.

Harris’ support for women’s access to abortions has been a focal point of her tenure as the country’s first female vice president. She embarked on a nationwide Reproductive Freedoms Tour earlier this year to draw attention to attacks on abortion access following the Dobbs decision . She attended her first stop in Wisconsin on Jan. 22, the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade .

Harris proposed federal protections that would limit state abortion restrictions during her first presidential campaign. Under her proposal, states would need to clear laws regulating abortion with the Department of Justice, which would need to confirm they are constitutional before taking effect, she explained in 2019 .

“How dare these elected leaders believe they are in a better position to tell women what they need, to tell women what is in their best interest?” Harris asked during a visit to a Minnesota Planned Parenthood clinic in March. “We have to be a nation that trusts women.”

Harris has traveled on an Economic Opportunity Tour this summer to defend the Biden administration’s economic policy and attack former President Donald Trump’s economic agenda.

While on tour, she touted legislation passed during Biden’s time in office, including the American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act . Harris has tried to emphasize that wage increases have outpaced inflation since the pandemic and made the case that Trump has plans to give more tax cuts to the rich.

“Donald Trump gave tax cuts to billionaires,” she said in a June social media post . “President Joe Biden and I are investing in the middle class and making sure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.”

The vice president has made clear that climate change is a key issue a Harris administration would seek to address.

While running for president in 2019, she proposed a climate plan with a $10 trillion price tag — nearly seven times more than the $1.6 trillion Biden has invested in addressing the issue. She also called for a ban on fracking.

As a senator, she co-sponsored the Green New Deal , which called for a dramatic increase in the production of renewable fuels, including wind, solar, and hydropower sources. The 10-year mobilization plan pushed for a transition to energy systems less reliant on generating greenhouse gases, which are the primary contributors to climate change.

Harris has been an advocate inside the Biden administration pushing for the president to forgive student loan debt , which became a staple of his domestic policy agenda.

As a senator, she co-sponsored Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ legislation to make two-year college free for all students and waive tuition for middle-class students attending four-year public universities.

At a Pride Month event last year, she criticized Florida’s 2022 “Don’t Say Gay” law banning educators from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary and middle school classrooms. Shortly after she announced her presidential campaign Sunday, the American Federation of Teachers endorsed Harris.

Rachel Barber is a 2024 election fellow at USA TODAY, focusing on politics and education. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @rachelbarber_