Categorical Inequality: Schools As Sorting Machines

TLDR

Schools, though founded on egalitarian ideals, function as social sorting machines that create categories underpinning later life inequalities. The review applies categorical inequality theory to contemporary American schools to offer conceptual tools for understanding, measuring, and evaluating how schools structure social inequality. It examines the categories schools create, adopt, and reinforce, and the mechanisms by which these categories generate inequalities within schools and beyond. The categorical inequality framework resolves a key tension in sociology of education by explaining how schools can simultaneously be egalitarian institutions and agents of inequality.

Abstract

Despite their egalitarian ethos, schools are social sorting machines, creating categories that serve as the foundation of later life inequalities. In this review, we apply the theory of categorical inequality to education, focusing particularly on contemporary American schools. We discuss the range of categories that schools create, adopt, and reinforce, as well as the mechanisms through which these categories contribute to production of inequalities within schools and beyond. We argue that this categorical inequality frame helps to resolve a fundamental tension in the sociology of education and inequality, shedding light on how schools can—at once—be egalitarian institutions and agents of inequality. By applying the notion of categorical inequality to schools, we provide a set of conceptual tools that can help researchers understand, measure, and evaluate the ways in which schools structure social inequality.