Tracking Inequality:
Stratification and Mobility in American High Schools
Samuel Roundfield Lucas is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at theUniversity of California-Berkeley.

"In this fine book, Lucas combines thoughtful and thorough statisticalanalyses with sociological theory….The implications for school reformare profound."
From the Foreword by Jeannie Oakes

"Lucas provides one of the most compelling descriptions of trackingof any researcher writing today….this book will change the way thatsociologists, and ultimately educators and parents, view the new forms oftracking."
James E. Rosenbaum, Northwestern University

"This book presents a challenge to educational research to understandwhy detracking in American high schools did not have the effect many wouldhave expected."
Alan Kerckhoff, Duke University

"For those interested in educational tracking, educational stratification,or structural constraints on the student career, Tracking Inequality is‘must reading.’"
Karl Alexander, Johns Hopkins University

What has happened since formal tracking was dismantled in U.S. high schools?In this provocative book, Samuel Lucas reveals that many unintended consequencesactually served to transform and submerge a stubborn system of in-schoolinequality. Drawing on nationally representative data and highly sophisticatedmethodologies, Lucas examines how the contemporary curricular structureworks, including the scope of the structure, mobility within the structure,how an individual’s location in the structure is socially patterned,and the consequences of these locations for a student’s college entryand career path. These issues are then skillfully linked to long-standingdebates about stratification processes within schools and the relationshipbetween schools and Western societies. Appendixes at the end of the bookinclude detailed information about the author’s methods of analyses,providing an excellent model for further research.

1998/240 pp/Pb $24.95/0-8077-3798-4
Cl $53.00/0-8077-3799-2