Negotiating Opportunities

How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School

Jessica McCrory Calarco

Includes observations and interviews with students, parents, and teachers over the course of five years of longitudinal ethnographic research
Reveals how inequalities result from complex (and often well-meaning) interactions between children, parents, teachers, and schools
Traces social class-based inequalities from their origins at home to their consequences in school
Argues against deficit-oriented programs that teach middle-class behaviors to working-class students in order to bridge the gap in educational outcomes

Negotiating Opportunities

How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School

Jessica McCrory Calarco

Description

In Negotiating Opportunities, Jessica McCrory Calarco argues that the middle class has a negotiated advantage in school. Drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Calarco traces that negotiated advantage from its origins at home to its consequences at school. Through their parents' coaching, working-class students learn to follow rules and work through problems independently. Middle-class students learn to challenge rules and request assistance, accommodations, and attention in excess of what is fair or required. Teachers typically grant those requests, creating advantages for middle-class students. Calarco concludes with recommendations, advocating against deficit-oriented programs that teach middle-class behaviors to working-class students. Those programs ignore the value of working-class students' resourcefulness, respect, and responsibility, and they do little to prevent middle-class families from finding new opportunities to negotiate advantages in school.

Negotiating Opportunities

How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School

Jessica McCrory Calarco

Negotiating Opportunities

How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School

Jessica McCrory Calarco

Author Information

Jessica McCrory Calarco is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indiana University.

Negotiating Opportunities

How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School

Jessica McCrory Calarco

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the 2019 North Central Sociological Association's Scholarly Achievement Award

"The productiveness of Calarco's work in raising fundamental questions is clear. By highlighting the agency of young children in navigating ambiguous social interactions, Negotiating Opportunities should encourage us all to push for accounts of inequality that recognize that mobility projects often entail navigating structural contexts in the absence of clear rules or guidance." -- Michelle Jackson, Stanford University, American Journal of Sociology

"Persistent income inequality in American schools frustrates teachers, principals, parents and policymakers who want to help all children succeed. By revealing the unintended effects of seemingly ordinary exchanges between students and teachers in everyday classrooms, Jessica Calarco deepens our understanding of the challenges we face in creating more equitable outcomes." -Sara Goldrick-Rab, Temple University

"Jessica Calarco's vivid portrayals of classroom life demonstrate that class cultures are as much about strategies as they are about values. Negotiating Opportunities will take its place alongside the very best studies of how social class works." -Aaron M. Pallas, Teachers College, Columbia University

"Vividly written, and offering compelling details, Calarco highlights how working-class children and parents don't want to bother teachers, while middle-class parents coach their children to pester educators for assistance, attention, and accommodation. Not only is this path-breaking book of interest to sociologists, but every educator and parent should read it." -Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania