The Disadvantaged Group

The Disadvantaged Group Linked with Low Socio-economic Group

The Disadvantaged Group Linked with Low Socio-economic Group

Introduction

In Australia different government policies were witness to enduring inequalities in educational opportunity and, consequently, educational outcomes. In the United States, substantial gains have indeed been made, and racial gaps have declined, yet disparities persist. The high school dropout rate for Australian minority groups remains nearly double that of whites. The racial gap in achievement has likewise declined somewhat, although some evidence suggests that it may be increasing in rural and urban disadvantaged areas and among younger groups. These inequalities are troubling, not to mention relevant to current debates on poverty, homelessness, and crime, given their implications for employment opportunity and economic well-being over the life course.

The Disadvantaged Group Linked with Low Socio-economic Group

The study of the relationship between economic inequality and educational opportunity has been guided by at least three assumptions. First, education is a crucial factor in improving one's social and economic status. Second, the quality of schooling one receives is related to the degree of social and economic success one achieves. And, third, the society has some level of responsibility for the type and quality of schooling available to its citizens (Chubb & Moe, 1990). Following a description of the historical context of the relationship of education to economic inequality, this entry discusses two opposing perspectives from which that relationship has been interpreted.

Research has identified significant factors in the black-white educational gap and achievement differences in particular. One is family background. Socioeconomic status of the student's household, for instance, most often operationalized as family income or parents' education, is consistently influential for achievement. This relationship is critical to the racial educational gap, as African American students and different communities in Australia continue to be disproportionately from lower socioeconomic households (Chubb & Moe, 1990). Family structural differences are likewise important, having implications for the availability of resources, parental time and supervision, and socialization. Some ethnographic research extends the focus on families to peer group influence, suggesting possible racial variation in peer group support for educational achievement.

Another line of research focuses on the institution of education itself and the ways in which it perpetuates, rather than reduces, already existent societal inequalities. The consequences of de jure and de facto race and class segregation of schools has garnered considerable attention as has material resource and funding differences between poor and nonpoor schools. A subset of this literature details stratification processes within the school, including ability grouping and differences in teacher expectations, both of which have consequences for general and race-specific achievement patterns I Australia.

To understand any social outcome or process, it is important to identify the institutions and elements at play and potential relations among those institutions and elements. This is also true for the study of inequality and its reproduction, especially given the complexities of contemporary social organization. Application of this approach to race and education specifically entails conceptualizing and modeling disparate outcomes as a function of multiple institutional processes and attributes, and ...