Categorical Inequality: Schools As Sorting Machines

Abstract

Despite their egalitarian ethos, schools are social sorting machines, creating categories that serve as the foundation of later life inequalities. In this review, we apply the theory of categorical inequality to education, focusing particularly on contemporary American schools. We discuss the range of categories that schools create, adopt, and reinforce, as well as the mechanisms through which these categories contribute to production of inequalities within schools and beyond. We argue that this categorical inequality frame helps to resolve a fundamental tension in the sociology of education and inequality, shedding light on how schools can—at once—be egalitarian institutions and agents of inequality. By applying the notion of categorical inequality to schools, we provide a set of conceptual tools that can help researchers understand, measure, and evaluate the ways in which schools structure social inequality.

Schools and Attitudes Toward Economic Equality

“…Indeed, there is evidence that academic streaming can increase the link between test scores of social background (Van de Werfhorst & Mijs, ) and early streaming can reduce long‐run equality of opportunity (Brunello & Checchi, ). While streaming also occurs within schools, streaming across schools can be more constraining in creating “categorical inequalities” that are hard to alter (Domina, Penner, & Penner, ).…”

School tracking and its role in social reproduction: reinforcing educational inheritance and the direct effects of social origin

“…Educational attainment is considered a strong determinant of an individual’s social status and thus a central element in the process of social reproduction (Blau and Duncan ; Bol and van de Werfhorst ; Dubow, Boxer and Huesmann, ; Müller and Karle ; Shavit and Müller ; Treiman ). Therefore, schools are considered one of the main institutions that affect status inequality (Domina, Penner and Penner ). Variation in educational systems between countries is well documented (e.g., Blossfeld et al ), and it may help explain cross‐national differences in social reproduction.…”

Crossing the finish line? A review of college completion inequality in the United States by race and class

“…The main difference arises from the selection processes that restrict access to higher education for some, and thus creates distinct populations between those who go to college and those who do not-at least during the periods of adolescence and young adulthood as examined in this review (Stevens, 2015). Figure 1, an increasing share of the US population are entering college and graduating with a bachelor's degree (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011;Domina, Penner, & Penner, 2017), although large disparities remain in BA attainment by racial/ethnic background (Bowen et al, 2009;Ciocca Eller & DiPrete, 2018;Ganderton & Santos, 1995;Hossler, Dundar, & Shapiro, 2013). Similar disparities are apparent when comparing college graduation rates; namely, for those who started at a 4-year postsecondary institution in 2010, whereas 64 and 74% of White and Asian students, respectively, finished within 6 years, only 54, 40, and 39% of Hispanic, Black, and Native American students, respectively, graduated within 6 years (see Figure 2).…”

“…The process of categorization stems from the human cognitive tendency to group social objects into distinct categories as a way to manage and interact in a complex social world, but it is through organizations that social categories are largely created and re-created in ways that lead to aggregate inequalities (Domina et al, 2017;Massey, 2007;Tilly, 1998;Tomaskovic-Devey & Avent-Holt, 2019). Thus, examining colleges and universities as organizations-or socially constructed spaces established to carry out a particular purpose-helps to describe the ways in which postsecondary schooling differentially sorts and categorizes students by race and class, and how this could lead to unequal college completion outcomes (Ballantine & Hammack, 2009;Blau & Scott, 2003;Ciocca Eller, 2019;Domina et al, 2017;Tilly, 1998; Tomaskovic-Devey & Avent-Holt, 2019).…”