Schools and the Stratification Process

The influence of socioeconomic origins on three outcomes of secondary schooling (academic achievement, course marks, and aspirations) is interpreted using path analysis and covariance analysis for six grade-cohorts of students in the Nashville Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA). While we have had some success in constructing recursive interpretations of background influences on educational outcomes, the proposed models do not account for the common content of similarly determined outcomes. Intelligence plays a key role in mediating the influence of social origins on educational outcomes. Further, there is little evidence that teachers discriminate by socioeconomic origin. School differences in educational outcomes are small and may be artifactual consequences of differences in student-body composition. High school quality is less persistent over time than student-body composition, and plays a minor role in the determination of ultimate educational attainment.