3. is usually defined as including wealthy
persons with substantial property and
investments. They are individuals high
in occupational prestige, amount of
education, income and housing
value. Such people are also said to be
high in socio-economic status (SES).

4. includes professionals, mangers and
small-business owners.

5. includes technical workers,
technicians, sales personnel, and
clerical workers.

6. is generally divided into upper
working class (including skilled crafts
workers) and lower working class
(unskilled manual workers).

7. generally resembles the lower working
class, but many of its members are the
third or fourth generation to live in
poverty and depend on public
assistance to sustain a relatively
meager existence.

8. Some analysts have gone still further and
have identified an establishment (or
overclass) that they believe is prospering in
a competitive international economy at
the same time that much of our population
is stagnating economically. As do observers
studying underclass development, these
analysts generally emphasize the
importance of education in determining
one’s social status and income.
Alternatively, some analysts have identified
a “creative class” consisting of highly
educated urban dwellers whose work
involves creativity.

10. - the Lynds’ observations of social class
and the schools were repeated by W.
Lloyd Warner and his associates in a
series of studies.
- Hundreds of studies have documented
the close relationship between social
class and education in the United States
and, indeed, throughout the world.

11.  “Middletown” study (by Robert & Helen
Lynd) – is one of the first systematic studies
investigating the relationship between
social class and achievement in school.
- the Lynds concluded that
parents, regardless of social class,
recognize the importance of education
for their children; however, many working-
class children come to school unequipped
to acquire the verbal skills and behavioral
traits required for success in the classroom.

13.  Further evidence of the relationship between
social class and school achievement can be
found in studies of poverty neighborhoods in
large cities.
 Levine and his colleagues examined sixth-
grade achievement patterns at more than a
thousand predominantly low-income schools
(which they are called concentrated poverty)
in 7 big cities and reported that all but a few
had average reading scores more than two
years below the national average. They also
pointed out that at least ¼ of the students at
these schools cannot read well enough when
they enter high school to be considered
functionally literate. This pattern can be found
at concentrated poverty schools in big cities
throughout the US.

14.  Many educators are also concerned
about the achievement of rural
students, esp. those living in low -
income regions and pockets of rural
poverty. Although rural students
achieve near the national average,
research indicates that poverty and
inequality can hamper their progress,
and that 2/3 of rural educators
believe that academic performance
of their low-income students is in
either “great need” or “fairly strong
need” of improvement.

16.  Social class is associated with many
educational outcomes in addition to
achievement in reading, math, and other
subjects.
 On the average , working –class students
not only have lower achievement scores
but also are less likely than middle-class
students to complete high school or to
enroll in or to complete college.
 Researchers find that social class relates to
college attendance and graduation even
when they compare students with similar
achievement levels.

17.  One team of researchers studying international
literacy patterns recently concluded that
“inequality is deeply rooted in the educational
system and in the workplace in the US…our
nation concentrates on producing and
rewarding 1st class skills and, as a result, is world
class at the top; however it …accepts in fact, if
not in rhetoric, a basic skills underclass.”
 These patterns also led a senior researcher at
the Educational Testing Service to observe that
the United States has not adequately
“recognized the need to eliminate barriers to
achievement that arise in the family, and how
lacks of resources affect achievement.”

20. identifies groups of people with
common ancestry and physical
characteristics.

24. identifies people who have a shared
culture.

29. Members of an ethnic group usually
have common ancestry and shared
language, religion and other cultural
traits. Because no pure races exist,
some scholars avoid referring to race
and instead discuss group
characteristics under the heading of
ethnicity.

30. Some racial and ethnic minority groups
in this country have experienced social
and economic oppression as a group
despite the accomplishments of many
individuals.

32. An ongoing concern for educators is
the fact that these racial and ethnic
minority groups are correspondingly
low in academic achievement.
In general, school achievement
scores parallel scores on
socioeconomic status; the higher the
SES score, the higher the
achievement scores.

34. The causes for these patterns include rising
tuition, reductions in federal funds, and
cuts in special recruiting and assistance
programs. Some educators also note that
participation in drug cultures may have
disabled many minority youth.
Reports from major educational agencies
have referred to the rate of minority
enrollment in higher education as
“shockingly low” and “intolerable”. The
reports generally conclude that colleges,
universities and government officials should
take steps to increase minority enrollment.

36. Educational achievement generally is
distressingly low at schools in poor inner-city
neighborhoods. We have also pointed out
that although high-school completion rates
for African American students have been
rising nationally, the dropout problem
remains severe in big cities. These problems
reflect the fact that the inner core of many
U.S. urban areas has become segregated
communities populated by working-class
and underclass African American and
Latino residents. Causes and results of this
socioeconomic and racial/ethnic
stratification include the following:

37. The African American population of the
United States has become more
economically polarized. The overall
socioeconomic status and income of this
population have increased substantially
since 1950.
Social institutions such as the family, the
school and the law enforcement system
often appear to have collapsed in the inner
city. Parents find it difficult to control their
children, and law enforcement agencies
are unable to cope with high rates of
juvenile delinquency and adult crime.

38. The concentration of low-income minority
populations in big-city poverty areas has
increased their isolation from the larger
society. In contrast, to the urban slums and
ghettos of fifty or one hundred years ago,
today’s concentrated poverty areas are
larger geographically, and in many cases
their residents are more homogenous in low
(low) socioeconomic status. Unskilled and
semiskilled jobs are more difficult to obtain,
and many jobs have been moved overseas
or to the suburbs, where they are
practically inaccessible to central-city
residents.

39.  The problems experienced by young black males have
escalated enormously. Some knowledgeable
observers believe that the plight of young males in
inner-city poverty areas is the root of a series of serious
problems: high rates of out-of-wedlock births, the
persistence of welfare dependency, and violent crime
and delinquency. The growth in female-headed
families in urban poverty areas relates directly to the
high rates at which young African American men drop
out of the labor force, are incarcerated in prisons or
placed on parole, or otherwise are excluded or
exclude themselves from mainstream institutions. The
result is a great reduction in the pool of men available
to participate in stable families and accumulate
resources for upward mobility.

41. The close interrelationship among the
social class, race and ethnicity and
school achievement leads researchers
to frequently ask whether race and
ethnicity are associated with
performance in the educational system
even after one takes into account the
low socioeconomic status of African
American and other disadvantaged
minority groups.

42. In general, the answer has been
that social class accounts for
much of the variation in
educational achievement by race
and ethnicity. That is if you the
social class of a group of students,
you can predict with a good deal
of accuracy whether their
achievement, ability, and college
attendance rates are high or low.

43. Information about their racial or
ethnic group generally does
relatively little to improve such a
prediction. This also mean that
working class white students as a
group are low in achievement and
college attainment, whereas middle-
class minority students, as a group,
rank relatively high on these
variables.

44. Disadvantaged minorities in the
United States remain
disproportionately working class and
underclass, and their children remain
much less successful in the
educational system than are the
children of the middle class.

45. Moreover, because education is important
channel for gaining access to the job market,
minority students with low socioeconomic
status have already less opportunity for
economic success later in their lives. From this
point of view, the school’s ineffectiveness in
educating students from working class homes
helps to perpetuate the current class system –
and the burden of poverty and low
achievement falls disproportionately on the
nation’s racial and ethnic groups.

46. For educators, the challenge is to
improve the performance of all low-
status students, from whatever ethnic
group.