Effectively Maintained Inequality: Education Transitions, Track Mobility, and Social Background Effects1

This article proposes a general explanation for social background‐related inequality. Educational attainment research indicates that the later an education transition, the lower the social background effect. While some suggest life course changes in the parent‐child relationship or between‐family competition explain this pattern, others contend the result is a statistical artifact, and that the analytic strategy presupposes agents are irrationally myopic. This article addresses these criticisms by framing educational transitions in terms of students' movement through the stratified curriculum. Students select their stratum, one of which is dropping out. To make these choices, they consider their most recent salient performance. Using time‐varying performance measures to predict students' track placement/school continuation sustains the validity of the educational transitions approach and suggests substantively important social background effects even for nearly universal transitions. Results are consistent with the general perspective termed effectively maintained inequality.

[1]  Ronnelle Paulsen.  Education, Social Class, and Participation in Collective Action , 1991 .

[2]  Elizabeth L. Useem.  Middle schools and math groups: Parents' involvement in children's placement. , 1992 .

[3]  Maureen T. Hallinan,et al.  The Organization of Students for Instruction in the Middle School , 1992 .

[4]  M. Hallinan.  Track Mobility in Secondary School , 1996 .

[5]  R. Mare,et al.  Secondary School Tracking and Educational Inequality: Compensation, Reinforcement, or Neutrality? , 1989, American Journal of Sociology.

[6]  Charles F. Manski,et al.  Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers , 2022 .

[7]  Z. Griliches.  Estimating the Returns to Schooling: Some Econometric Problems. , 1977 .

[8]  Nicole A. Lazar,et al.  Statistical Analysis With Missing Data , 2003, Technometrics.

[9]  J. A. Calvin.  Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables , 1998 .

[10]  M. Garet,et al.  Students, Courses, and Stratification. , 1988 .

[11]  Donald R. Moore,et al.  The New Improved Sorting Machine. , 1988 .

[12]  James E. Rosenbaum,et al.  Track misperceptions and frustrated college plans: an analysis of the effects of tracks and track perceptions in the National Longitudinal Survey , 1980 .

[13]  A. Raftery,et al.  Maximally Maintained Inequality: Expansion, Reform, and Opportunity in Irish Education, 1921-75. , 1993 .

[14]  Evelyn R. Rosenthal,et al.  Class and merit in the American high school: An assessment of the revisionist and meritocratic arguments , 1978 .

[15]  Samuel R. Lucas,et al.  Tracking Inequality: Stratification and Mobility in American High Schools , 2001 .

[16]  A. Yashin,et al.  Heterogeneity's ruses: some surprising effects of selection on population dynamics. , 1985, The American statistician.

[17]  A. Wells,et al.  The Politics of Culture: Understanding Local Political Resistance to Detracking in Racially Mixed Schools. , 1996 .

[18]  Samuel R. Lucas,et al.  Race, Class, and Tournament Track Mobility. , 2001 .

[19]  S. Hansell,et al.  Curriculum Tracking and Delinquency. , 1982 .

[20]  A. Raftery,et al.  Making the Grade: Educational Stratification in the United States, 1925-1989 , 1993 .

[21]  Arthur G. Powell,et al.  The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace. , 1985 .

[22]  Jeannie Oakes,et al.  Potential Pitfalls of Systemic Reform: Early Lessons from Research on Detracking. , 1996 .

[23]  Lawrence E. Raffalovich,et al.  The Evolution of Equality of Educational Opportunities in France. , 1984 .

[24]  Gillian Stevens,et al.  Socioeconomic indexes and the new 1980 census occupational classification scheme , 1985 .

[25]  Selective Attrition in a Newly Hostile Regime: The Case of 1980 Sophomores , 1996 .

[26]  Cynthia Parsons,et al.  The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace , 1985 .

[27]  M. Sobel,et al.  Identification Problems in the Social Sciences. , 1996 .

[28]  Gretchen B. Rossman,et al.  Mandating Academic Excellence: High School Responses to State Curriculum Reform. Sociology of Education Series. , 1993 .

[29]  M. Berends.  Educational Stratification and Students’ Social Bonding to School , 1995 .

[30]  James J. Heckman,et al.  Life Cycle Schooling and Dynamic Selection Bias: Models and Evidence for Five Cohorts of American Males , 1998, Journal of Political Economy.

[31]  S. Fienberg,et al.  Identification and estimation of age-period-cohort models in the analysis of discrete archival data , 1979 .

[32]  James J. Heckman,et al.  Advances in Econometrics: The identification problem in econometric models for duration data , 1983 .

[33]  F. Nielsen,et al.  The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. , 1995 .

[34]  Robert D. Mare,et al.  Social Background and School Continuation Decisions , 1980 .

[35]  Jeroen K. Vermunt,et al.  Log-Linear Models for Event Histories , 1997 .

[36]  W. Müller,et al.  Social Selection in Educational Systems in Europe , 1993 .

[37]  H. Blossfeld,et al.  Persistent Inequality: Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen Countries , 1994 .

[38]  R. B. Wolk,et al.  Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth , 1998 .

[39]  F. Hayes.  Race, Urban Politics, and Educational Policy-Making in Washington, D.C. , 1990 .

[40]  James E. Rosenbaum,et al.  Gatekeeping in an Era of More Open Gates: High School Counselors' Views of Their Influence on Students' College Plans , 1996, American Journal of Education.

[41]  H. Ganzeboom,et al.  Family background and educational attainment in the Netherlands of 1891-1960 birth cohorts , 1993 .

[42]  Zvi Griliches,et al.  Sibling Models and Data in Economics: Beginnings of a Survey , 1979, Journal of Political Economy.

[43]  N. Carey.  Curricular Differentiation in Public High Schools. Fast Response Survey System. E.D. Tabs. , 1994 .