Social Class, Poverty, and Education: Policy and Practice

Equal access to education is an important American ideal, yet for many years it has been unavailable to a large number of Americans living in impoverished communities. Biddle gives an insightful progress report on today's educational system.

This volume provides both an overview and a set of original essays concerned with a crucial issue for American education - the effects of poverty and social class upon and within schools. The chapters of this book offer information about student disadvantage (particularly poverty) and outcomes in today's schools, while acknowledging the complexity of the issues and calling for more research. Each chapter might be described as a progress report for a rapidly developing subfield of effort concerned with poverty, other forms of disadvantage, and education.

Bruce J. Biddle is Professor of Psychology and Sociology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. A graduate of Antioch College, he spent a year studying sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and then completed his Ph.D. (social psychology) at the University of Michigan. His research focuses largely on role theory, the role of the teacher, classroom interaction, adolescent decision making, the utilization of research knowledge in education, and the recent attack on public education in America.