Inequality : A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America by Christopher Jencks 1972

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5.0 out of 5 stars A Reassessment of James Coleman "Equality" 1966, October 25, 1998
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This review is from: Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America (Hardcover)
Inequality : A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America by Christopher Jencks 1972
Leon Todd (leontodd@execpc.com 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 about the legitimacy of these term have been many and heated and in the ensuing discourse confounding and confusing.

Some scholars deny the existence of social classes in America. Jencks (1972) stated that: The term family background can itself be somewhat misleading, since differences between families derive not just from differences between neighborhoods, regions, schools, and all other experiences that are the same for children in the same family socioeconomic status. Also, the term family background has various interpretations.

By "family background," Jencks (1972) referred to all the environmental factors that make brothers and sisters more alike than random individuals. "Some of these factors are economic, while some are not." Jencks further stated that there can be great variation in "family background" among children who come from the same social or economic class.

Jencks (1972) estimated that a family's economic status probably correlates about 0.35 with children's test scores. What this means is that the test scores of children whose fathers rank in the top fifth of the occupational hierarchy will on the average be 13 to 15 points higher than children whose fathers rank in the bottom fifth. If family income is used as a measure of SES, the disparity between these two groups will be less than 13 points. Jencks further stated that class differences appear to be greatest for verbal ability and general information. Test of mathematical skills, reading comprehension, and non-verbal ability are less influenced by economic background.

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