ABSTRACT
Egalitarian school systems, impatient with sluggish societal processes, eagerly attempt to promote disadvantaged students. But, despite intentional educational investment and latent social amelioration, achievement differentials along social lines endure over time and, in some cases, even widen. The persisting differentials do not surprise the “allocation” theorists who rely on political and cultural mechanisms of exclusion in explaining the continuous superiority of the socially “strong.” They, however, challenge “socialization” theories that stress the capability of schools of boosting the achievement of the “weak” (Kerckhoff 1976).
