SOC 215 Spring 2002

Exam 2

New York State has broken down elementary and middle school standardized test scores by race and ethnicity for the first time and found that white and Asian students do much better than black and Hispanic students in English and mathematics.
The findings also show that black and Hispanic students continue to lag as they go through school and that in many cases the gap worsens.
The achievement gap by race and ethnicity, which mirrors similar findings nationwide, exists across the board, from affluent suburbs to large cities, but it is most striking in urban areas with high concentrations of poverty, like New York City.
…Statewide, there is a gap of 34 points between the percentage of black and Hispanic students meeting state standards in fourth-grade English and the percentage of white students meeting standards. In eighth-grade math, 52 percent of whites met standards statewide, compared with 13 percent of blacks, a gap of 39 points.

(“Racial Gap in Test Scores Found Across New York”, published in the New York Times on March 28, 2002, By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS)

1. Explain the article’s findings from the point of view of two of the following theories: Functionalist (Parsons), Neo-Marxist (Bowles and Gintis), Neo-Weberian (Collins) or Cultural Capital (Bourdieu).

2. Describe three possible policies intended to equalize education from a school-centered point of view, and three from a student-centered point of view. Explain the rationale behind each policy.

3. Select one of the readings we read in class since the previous exam, and suggest three points of critique on that reading (how would it be criticized by a sociologist of education approaching the reading from a different theoretical framework).