6.6 How Schools Reproduce and Reduce Stratification
LO 6.6: Evaluate how schools both reproduce and reduce stratification.
Scholars have long looked to understand how the U.S. education system reproduces stratification by giving select students an advantage and reducing it by helping some individuals overcome significant structural barriers. A large body of research on children’s learning finds that many things contribute to student learning. These factors include per-student funding, overall school funding, teacher quality and experience, and students’ sociodemographic characteristics, including gender, race, and class, and more. Sociologists also argue that the basis for some inequality in learning, like test scores, occurs outside of school in families.
How Schools and Families Matter for Test Scores
Condron et al. (2021) analyzed the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) data to evaluate whether students’ test scores improved or declined after the summer break. They found that schooling improves test scores because the mean scores were lower on the fall test than on the spring test. In other words, skills decline over the summer when students are not in school. The researchers identified patterns in different subject areas. For reading, language, and science, they found that academic skills “either grow more slowly during the school year compared to the summer … or grow during the summer then shrink during the school year” (Condron et al., 2021, p. 332).
In contrast, math skills grow during the school year. Overall, Condron et al. (2021) argue that by the spring, something happens in schools that increases math skill gains inequitably. They speculate that math skills are more often developed in school settings than other skills, such as reading. For example, parents may read to children at home but do fewer math-based activities.
Photo 6.12
A Parent Reading to Their Child
In related research, Downey et al. (2022) find that schools are “standardizing institutions” to some extent. Standardizing institutions smooth out the inequalities that exist outside the institution. For example, schools can reduce learning gaps in academic skills correlated with social class (Downey et al., 2022). They seem, however, to slow down learning for girls compared to boys. Downey et al. (2022) analyzed data to understand school’s effect on girls’ and boys’ learning. They found that girls learn faster outside of school “(in both reading and math), but this advantage is completely eliminated when school is in session” (p. 89). Overall, they argue that schools disadvantage girls and “that girls’ superior performance [in school] occurs in spite of schools and because of how girls spend their time outside school” (such as reading) (p. 95).
Downey and Condron (2016) suggest that schools “refract” inequalities. A refraction framework explains that schools can reproduce inequality, make inequality worse, or reduce disparities. Still, they do not affect all groups in the same way. Schools do reduce inequalities associated with social class, but less so for gender.
The effect of schools on reducing inequality is difficult to measure definitively because children are usually not randomly assigned to schools (Downey & Condron, 2016). They attend the schools closest to where they live, that their parents chose, or their district assigned them to. It is also unknown “why some children learn faster than others” (p. 209). Finally, children spend most of their time outside school. The roles of families, neighborhoods, and other agents of socialization also influence students’ academic learning and skills. Therefore, schools matter, but their effects interacts with that of other institutions (such as family) in children’s lives and with sociodemographic factors like race, gender, and social class that lead to different treatment by these institutions.