ABSTRACT
How do school processes affect children and their families? Alexander and Entwisle (chapter 5, this volume) adopt a useful framework for answering this question. They pose three possibilities: Does schooling compensate for initial inequalities that students bring with them to school? Alternatively, does schooling reinforce initial differences, so that inequality is wider when students leave school than when they enter it? Yet another possibility is that schooling is neutral with respect to inequality, preserving but not magnifying initial differences. For Alexander and Entwisle, inequality refers to achievement differences between students from economically advantaged and disadvantaged families; the same framework can be applied to differences between boys and girls, minority students and Whites, and among other social categories (Gamoran & Mare, 1989).
