School Mathematics as Gatekeeper

ABSTRACT

In the United States, students’ ability to perform well in school mathematics is important for gaining access to a selective college and affects entry into sought-after majors. We find that the gatekeeper function of mathematics is not a function of general academic prowess and operates separately from advantages attributable to family background. Moreover mathematics is especially important for educational attainment among youth from higher socioeconomic status families. Human capital theory implies that schooling’s emphasis on math reflects its functional importance in the workplace. However, our analyses of skills used in workplaces indicate that very small proportions of educated workers ever use “school math.” We draw out the implications of this disjuncture both for theories of class reproduction and for human capital theory.

KEYWORDS:

• Education
• mathematics
• social stratification
• work

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Notes

1. One could argue that the persistence of human capital theory is related to the dominance of neoclassical economic theory. That is, as long as the economy is understood as made up of individual rational actors who make choices to maximize output and utility, an individually based theory of education and stratification will be similarly dominant. Indeed, an early critique of human capital theory by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1975) makes precisely this link.

2. Though there are AP tests in a vast array of school subjects, many selective colleges and universities place particular value on the two AP calculus and the math-reliant AP physics exams.

3. See, for example, http://fye.uiowa.edu/orientation-welcome-iowa/ui-placement-exams/math.

4. The ELS measure of family SES consists of five equally weighted components: family income, mother’s and father’s occupational prestige, and mother’s and father’s educational attainment. After checking for multicollinearity, we included a measure of parents’ highest level of education separately in case education (conceived as cultural capital) is important as a predictor of student attainment beyond a family’s general social standing measured by SES.

5. The motivation scale variable is composed of standardized versions of the following variables from the ELS Survey: How far in school the student thinks he/she will get; How far in school students mother/father wants tenth- grader to go; How many times tenth-grader cut/skipped classes; How many times tenth-grader was late for school; How many times tenth-grader got in trouble at school; How often student comes to school without books/pencil and paper/completed homework. The scale has a reliability of 0.70.

6. We also tested for significant interactions between Math Performance and Gender. These are reported in Appendix Table A3; no significant interactions were observed in these models.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Douglas

Daniel Douglas is a Senior Researcher at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations. He earned his PhD in Sociology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2017. His current research examines developmental mathematics in postsecondary education, and connections between higher education and employment, especially within STEM fields.

Paul Attewell

Paul Attewell is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research interests focus on social inequality and higher education, especially the many barriers to degree completion faced by low-income undergraduates. His most recent book was an introduction to data mining methods for the social sciences.