It is one thing to take as a given that approximately 70 percent of an entering high school freshman class will not attend college, but to assign a particular child to a curriculum designed for that 70 percent closes off for that child the opportunity to attend college.
In a high school, the norms act to hold down the achievements of those who are above average, so that the school's demands will be at a level easily maintained by the majority.
I'd propose that each central-city child should have an entitlement from the state to attend any school in the metropolitan area outside his own district - with per pupil funds going with him.
Grades are almost completely relative, in effect ranking students relative to others in their class. Thus extra achievement by one student not only raises his position, but in effect lowers the position of others.
For to change the norms, the very foci of attention, of a cultural system is a difficult task - far more complex than that of changing an individual's attitudes and interests.
Cultural dominance of middle-class norms prevail in middle-class schools with a teacher teaching toward those standards and with students striving to maintain those standards.
As an example, one of the schools I have been studying is too small to compete effectively in most sports, but participates with vigor each year in the state music contests.
It is clear from all these data that the interests of teenagers are not focused around studies, and that scholastic achievement is at most of minor importance in giving status or prestige to an adolescent in the eyes of other adolescents.
The results indicate that heterogeneity of race and heterogeneity of family educational background can increase the achievement of children from weak educational backgrounds with no adverse effect on children from strong educational backgrounds.
The present structure of rewards in high schools produces a response on the part of an adolescent social system which effectively impedes the process of education.
