Inequality: Reassessment

There is nearly as much economic inequality among brothers raised in the same home as in the general population. Further, there is almost as much economic inequality among those who score high on standardized tests as in the general population. Equalizing everyone's reading scores would not appreciably reduce the number of economic "failures." In addition, there is no evidence that school reform can substantially reduce the extent of cognitive inequality, as measured by tests of verbal fluency, reading comprehension, or mathematical skill - school resources does not have an appreciable effect on either test scores or educational attainment. Finally, people who define a good school in terms of its student body are probably wiser than those who define it in terms of its budget. The "bottom line" is a confirmation of James Coleman's "Equality in Educational Opportunity" conclusion that school expenditures don't matter. Thus, our steadily increasing inflation-adjusted per/pupil education expenditures since then have been wasted.

Inequality : A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America by Christopher Jencks 1972Leon Todd ([email protected] from Milwaukee, WI usa , October 24, 1998 Christopher Jencks, Inequality (1972), noted that it is probably wiser to define a "good" school in terms of student body characteristics than in terms of its budget or school resources. According to Jencks, once a good school starts taking in "undesirable" students (the definition of desirable sometimes pertains to academic, social, or economic attributes), its academic standing automatically declines. He concluded that while an elementary schools' social composition had only a moderate effect on student's cognitive achievement, secondary or high school social composition had a significant effect on achievement. Jencks also concluded that school racial composition had only a small effect on black students' later occupational status. This evidence on racial composition and occupational status is far more convincing than any evidence offered to date supporting the position that expenditures or school resources influence academic achievement.The type of friends students are likely to make, the values they are exposed to, and satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the school, are all dependent upon the character of the student body. Jencks reanalyzed Coleman's EEOS data, Equality of Educational Opportunity (1966) and also concluded that the achievement of lower class students, both black and white, was fairly strongly related to the socioeconomic level of their classmates as long as the poverty class students were in a significant minority of the school student body. This usually meant that a student's achievement was also related to the race, or more accurately the class, of his classmates, since black classmates tended to be poorer or of a lower SES classmates, and vice versa. Jencks also concluded that when the socioeconomic level of a lower class child's classmates was held constant, however, their race had no relationship to achievement.This conclusion is consistent with Coleman's argument (1966) that school social class has an effect on academic achievement independent of the individual student's family background. Jencks reported that when race and the economic status of students within schools were controlled for, differences in school policies and resources did Not significantly affect verbal achievement. Black student achievement was found to be even less related to schools' policies and resources than white student achievement. This conclusion was inconsistent with Coleman's findings."Family background, "social class," and "economic status" are often used interchangeably by social scientists. This interpretation or confounding of these complex concepts often poses serious problems in terms of the comparability and interpretation of research findings. The term "social class" has been defined in a variety of ways. Disputes abo