ABSTRACT
We wish to use what we have learned as a springboard to discuss a modest but challenging plan to improve the quality of education young people receive. First, however, let us stress that this study should be given serious attention. Like several previous studies (for example, Everhart, 1983; Metz, 1978; Oakes, 1985; Ogbu, 1978; Rist, 1970; Valli, 1985; Weis 1990) it documents that schools do help to reproduce structural inequality in some very specific, identifiable ways. But it goes beyond previous studies by examining how a school was addressing multiple forms of diversity — race, social class, sex, and disability — based on data collected over a period of time. The dynamics of what we learned cannot be reduced to reproduction of inequality. This study also goes beyond many previous studies in pointing out factors that were promoting equality and justice, and that could conceivably be strengthened and augmented. Thus, it provides an analysis of the school as a very complex institution that has a net effect of reproducing the status quo, but that contains the elements of social change.
