ABSTRACT
Perhaps the most important educational opportunities in American society that money can buy are represented by the school one attends, "purchased" through the parents' choice of residential location or payment of private school tuition. But most of the differences in student learning outcomes are among students within the same schools, rather than between schools. Since the landmark Equality of Educational Opportunity study conducted by James Coleman and his colleagues in 1966, sociologists of education have repeatedly found that only 10 to 20 percent of the variance in student test scores is attributable to average achievement differences among schools. A large part of the differences that are found among schools is further reducible to the social compositions of their student bodies.
