Tracking Inequality : Stratification and Mobility in American High Schools

What has happened since formal tracking was dismantled in U.S. high schools? In this provocative book, Samuel Lucas reveals that many unintended consequences actually served to transform and submerge a stubborn system of in-school inequality. Drawing on nationally representative data and highly sophisticated methodologies, Lucas examines how the contemporary curricular structure works, including the scope of the structure, mobility within the structure, how an individual’s location in the structure is socially patterned, and the consequences of these locations for a student’s college entry and career path. These issues are then skillfully linked to long-standing debates about stratification processes within schools and the relationship between schools and Western societies. Appendixes at the end of the book include detailed information about the author’s methods of analyses, providing an excellent model for further research.

Samuel Roundfield Lucas is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley.