Schooled and Sorted: How Educational Categories Create Inequality - Softcover

Domina, Thurston; Penner, Andrew M.; Penner, Emily K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0871540002 ISBN 13: 9780871540003

Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation, 2023

Synopsis

We tend to view education primarily as a way to teach students skills and knowledge that they will draw upon as they move into their adult lives. However, schools do more than educate students—they also place students into categories, such as kindergartner, English language learner, or honor roll student. In Schooled & Sorted, Thurston Domina, Andrew M. Penner, and Emily K. Penner, explore processes of educational categorization in order to explain the complex relationship between education and social inequality—and to identify strategies that can help build more just educational systems.

Some educational categories have broadly egalitarian consequences. Indeed, Domina, Penner, and Penner argue that when societies enroll young people in school, making them students, they mark them as individuals who are worthy of rights. But other educational categories reinforce powerful social categories—including race, gender, and class—and ultimately reproduce social and economic inequality in society. Elite colleges, tracked high schools, and elementary school gifted programs provide not only different educational experiences, but also create merit and inequality by sorting students into categories that are defined by the students who are excluded.

Schooled & Sorted highlights that many of the decisions that define educational categories occur in school-based committee meetings and other relatively local settings. The local nature of these decisions provides many opportunities to define educational categories differently, and for school communities to bring about change.

Schooled & Sorted is an illuminating investigation into the ways sorting within schools translates into inequality in the larger world. While some educational categorization may be unavoidable, the authors suggest ways to build a more equitable system—and thus a more equitable society.

About this title

About the Author

Thurston Domina is Robert W. Eaves Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Andrew M. Penner is professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine.

Emily K. Penner is associate professor of education at the University of California, Irvine.
 

From the Back Cover

Society primarily views education as a way to teach students skills and knowledge that they will draw upon as they move into their adult lives. However, schools do more than educate students – they also place students into categories, such as kindergartner, English language learner, and honor roll student. But do these categories have larger consequences than simply sorting students into classrooms? In Schooled & Sorted Thurston Domina, Andrew M. Penner, and Emily K. Penner, explore how educational categories reify and reinforce powerful existing social categories – including race, ethnicity, and class – and ultimately reproduce social and economic inequality in broader society.
 
Domina and colleagues argue that while education is often seen as a tool for social mobility and reducing inequality, categories used in schools shape students’ access to resources, which ultimately have far-reaching impacts on their lives. The authors assert that the classes students are sorted into influence their educational experiences – students who are placed in higher-tracked classes are believed to have stronger academic skills than students in lower-tracked classes. As a result, more resources are often devoted to students in higher-tracked classes. Because many measures of academic achievement reflect values of the status quo, white, affluent students are overrepresented in these track assignments, leading to a reproduction of societal status and resource inequality within schools.
 
This inequality within schools translates into lasting inequalities in the adult world. Society views educational achievement to be based on merit – high achievers have done well because they worked hard and are rewarded with resources, status, and power, including high-paying, high-status jobs at prestigious organizations. Those with lower educational status, on the other hand, are seen as undeserving and are therefore sorted into lower-paid jobs in lower-status professions and hold less influence.
 
Domina and colleagues contend, however, that while educational categorization is unavoidable, a more equitable system, and thus a more equitable society, can be built. A key component is to build and uphold categories that emphasize educational goods that are inherently valuable, such as the ability to read, as opposed to those that derive value from scarcity, such as status and prestige.
 
Schooled & Sorted is an illuminating investigation into the ways sorting within schools translates to sorting – and inequality – into the larger world.
 

Edition details

• Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0871540002
• ISBN 13: 9780871540003
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 293