the school mix effect-- the history of an enduring problem in educational research, policy and...

7/27/2019 The School Mix Effect-- The History of an Enduring Problem in Educational Research, Policy and Practice

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The School Mix Effect: The History of an Enduring Problem in Educational Research, Policyand PracticeAuthor(s): Martin ThruppSource: British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1995), pp. 183-203Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1393367 .

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BritishJournal of Sociology f Education,Vol. 16, No. 2, 1995 183

TheSchoolMix Effect:thehistory f an enduringroblemneducationalesearch,olicyandpractice

MARTIN THRUPP, University f Waikato,New Zealand

ABSTRACT The contextualeffectof thesocial class mix of a school's ntakehas beenidentfied nseveralrecent tudiesas havingan importantnfluencen individual cademicperformance,articularlyfor working lass students.However heeffect, fgenuine, s poorlyunderstood. hispaperreviews hehistory of research nto this conceptsince the sixties, examininghow political, ideologicalandmethodologicalonsiderationsaveinfluencedesearchocreate urcurrentignorancef theeffects fschoolmix. On the basisof thisreview,t is argued hat(i), there s at least a prima-facie asefor theexistenceof a significant choolmix effect:and (ii), thatgiven the limitationsof past approaches,he mostrewarding irectionor futureresearchwould be to exploreikelycausalmechanismshroughmicro-levelanalysis. Some ways in which causal mechanismsrelating o studentsubculturesmightbeginto betheorisedresuggested.

IntroductionThe idea that school peers play an important role in determining the academic successof individual pupils is well established in popular wisdom. As Jencks Jencks et al., 1972)has observed, 'many people define a good school not as one with fancy facilities or highlypaid teachers but as one with the "right" kinds of students', a view in which 'the qualityof a school depends on its exclusiveness' (p. 29).The question of the contextual impact of the social class balance of a school's intakeon the performance of individual students-the school mix effect-goes to the heart ofcontemporary debate over education policy. For if, as some recent research has found(McPherson & Willms, 1987; Lauder & Hughes, 1990), school mix is significant indetermining the educational outcomes of individual students then it follows on at leastthree grounds that governments should seek to ensure that schools have well balancedsocial class intakes. Firstly, by increasing the overallevel of achievement in a population,balancing school mix would help to optimise mean national standards of attainment(Henderson et al., 1978). Secondly, by improving working class attainment, balancingschool mix would promote equality of opportunity (in the hard sense of equalising school0142-5692/95/020183-21 @ 1995 CarfaxPublishingLtd

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184 M. Thlruppoutcomes and life chances). Thirdly, balancing school mix may accomplish this withoutsubstantially affecting the mean attainment levels of those groups who currently achievewell (Lauder & Hughes, 1990).However as McPherson and Willms (1987) note, the question of how school mixaffects the educational performance of individual students is 'not well understood' (p. 23).Moreover, the claim that school mix has a significant impact on working class perform-ance is controversial. Indeed the history of this concept over the past 30 years has beenso coloured by political, ideological and methodological considerations that it is hard toestablish what influence school mix has on student performance. To give a recentexample of political and ideological influence we need go no further than Chubb &Moe's (1990) much publicised research. Although their data suggest that school mix doeshave a significant impact on student performance, their neo-liberal politics leads them toclaim that 'schools can succeed or fail regardless of their student bodies' (p. 147). Theimplication is that schools 'should be free to admit as many or as few students as theywant based on whatever criteria they think relevant' (p. 222).A similar methodological blindness has also led to the failure to address key questions.For example, the claim that school mix is a significant causal variable emanates from thequantitative research tradition on school performance. However, there is a considerablebody of qualitative research which makes the claim that school mix is a genuine causalvariable problematic. For example, the ethnographies of Lacey (1970), Willis (1977), Ball(1981), Brown (1987) andJones (1991) all suggest, albeit for differing reasons, that schoolsthemselves are divided by streaming and by the moral order imposed by students ontheir peers. Hence if school mix produces a real effect in the sense suggested byMcPherson & Willms and Lauder & Hughes, it is difficult to see how the effecttranscends divisions within schools.

The isolation of qualitative from quantitative researchers has allowed quantitativeresearchers to assert that school mix is a genuine causal variable, rather than, say, aproxy for other causal processes [1], while qualitative researchers have not taken theircue from the quantitative tradition to investigate whether school mix is a genuine causalvariable and if so, how it works. The fact is that because of these methodologicaloversights we do not know whether school mix is a genuine causal variable and, if it is,how it works. What appears to be a straightforward idea turns out to be rather morecomplex with educational research throwing a little light and rather less wisdom on it.The aim of this paper, therefore, is to critically appraise literature bearing on thequestion of school mix over the past 30 years to see whether the weight of evidencesuggests that school mix is likely to be a genuine causal variable. This involves analysingthe way political, ideological and methodological considerations have influenced researchprogrammes, their design and the interpretations placed on their findings. Such aninvestigation then opens the way to addressing our current ignorance about the effectsof school mix. While the political, ideological and methodological commitments ofresearchers may have 'got in the way' of understanding the nature and significance ofschool mix in ways more subtle than that exemplified by Chubb & Moe, we should notunderestimate the political and educational importance of the concept if indeed we canestablish that it is a genuine causal variable and explain how it influences individualstudent performance.If we are to understand how various considerations have influenced research on schoolmix, we need to look at the history of the concept. The earliest systematic studies in thisarea were the status attainment studies of post-war American sociologists.



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TheSchoolMix Effect 185Coleman et al. and Liberal Educational InterventionResearch related to school mix began in the US in the late 1950s. Concerned more withthe socio-psychological impact of school mean socio-economic status (SES) on studentaspirations than on measured school achievement, these early studies examined theeffects of school SES composition on students' later life-chances, particularly theirlikelihood of attending university. Wilson (1959) was amongst the first to demonstratethat pupils attending schools with high proportions of high SES students were more likelyto intend going to university than would otherwise be expected given their own socialclass background and academic performance. This positive finding was later confirmedin a series of similar studies by Michael (1961), Turner (1964) and Boyle (1966).Yet it was not until the release of the influential Coleman Report (Coleman et al.,1966) that the effects of school mix on student achievement received widespreadattention. Equality of EducationalOpportunity as a report on the extent and causes ofeducational inequality in the US commissioned by Congress in response to Section 402of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Coleman and his colleagues wrote at a time when ethnicconflict in inner city ghettos appeared to threaten the cohesion of American life. As partof Johnson's 'Great Society' programme, the liberal reforms of the 'War on Poverty'attempted to meet public expectations set up by the preceding Kennedy Administrationfor a more egalitarian society. From conception the Coleman Report was destined to bean influential document because the congressmen who commissioned Coleman hopedthat he would find glaring inequalities in the financial and material resources received byschools in different communities that would legitimate massive federal intervention inghetto schools. In the event they were disappointed because Coleman's conclusion wasthat there was little inequity in the allocation of material resources to schools. Further-more, Coleman found that most school variables made little difference to schooloutcomes over and above the influence of student background characteristics.Nonetheless Coleman did find that minority achievement was highest in ethnicallyintegrated schools. This became a trumpeted finding because, in contrast to the rest ofthe report which failed to find that other forms of direct state intervention (such asincreased funding) had an effect, it appeared to offer some solution to the contentiousissue of educational inequalities between America's white and black communities.Coleman argued that the apparent positive effects of a largely white student body camenot from racial composition per se but from the better educational backgroundand higher aspirations that are on the average found amongst white students.

(1966, p. 307)He suggested:

The effects of the student body environment upon a student's achievementappear to lie in the educational proficiency possessed by that student body,whatever its racial or ethnic composition. (ibid.)

Thus, although Coleman's brief was to explore ethnic inequalities, in essence hisargument appears to have been that it was the social class/prior achievement mix ofschools which made the difference [2].

Coleman found that school mix was the only school variable that seemed to have asignificant impact on academic outcomes:

Attributes of other students account for far more variation in the achievementof minority group children than do any attributes of school facilities andslightly more than do attributes of staff. (1966, p. 302)



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186 M. ThruppWhereas the unique contributions of school and teacher were 'vanishingly small', theunique contribution of student body characteristics were 'very large' (p. 304). Colemanargued that the school mix effect was 'asymmetric'-that it had its greatest effect onthose from educationally deficient backgrounds (ibid.).Two important legacies for the way in which school mix is perceived today by manyeducational researchers and policy makers may be traced back to Coleman's findings.First, the Coleman Report led to the development of bussing policies in the US. Whenbussing was later widely discounted in the more conservative climate of the 1970s and1980s as a failed liberal reform, the notion of balancing school mix became politicallyuntenable. This in turn is likely to have influenced the demise of research into schoolmix. Yet the evidence on the apparent failure of bussing does not in itself substantiatethe view that balancing school mix could not provide a potentially powerful educationalintervention. Rather it points to deficiencies in the way that the bussing policies of thetime were implemented. An example is the way in which desegregation schemesgenerally applied only to inner city areas rather than entire metropolitan regions. Thismeant that desegregation often had little effect because it was followed by resegregationas white, middle class families moved to outer suburbs beyond the reach of the schemes[3].A second legacy stems from the Coleman Report's seemingly ambiguous findingsconcerning school mix. Coleman's conclusion that minority achievement was highest inethnically integrated schools appears inconsistent with another of his findings: thatminority students had lower academic self-concept in high SES schools. Coleman foundthat

school integration has conflicting effects on attitudes of minority group chil-dren: it increases their sense of control of the environment or their sense ofopportunity, but decreases their self concept. (1966, p. 324)

This ambiguity helped researchers in the 1970s (Meyer, 1970;Jencks etal., 1972; Nelson,1972; Bain & Anderson, 1974; Alexander & Eckland, 1975; Alwin & Otto, 1977) totheorise an oppositional, counterbalancing explanation of their lack of success atdiscovering significant overall school mix effects. Typically these studies argued thatwhile school SES mix did have a positive normative effect on status aspirations (Kelly,1952), it also created a negative effect as a result of status comparison. In high SESschools, students were seen to have higher aspirations from interacting with others likelyto attend university but to suffer comparatively by having to compete with them. Thelatter influence was often known as the 'frog pond effect' (Davis, 1966). The 'ability' mixof the school was therefore thought to work against the SES mix in a counterbalancingway such that while these 'different' mix effects might be considerable, overall mix effectswould be small. Coleman's findings were sometimes seen to have supported thishypothesis [4].In fact, Coleman did not regard the apparently conflicting findings concerning schoolmix to be of the same magnitude; he clearly held that integrating schools would boostminority achievement (1966, p. 324) [5]. The reinterpretation of Coleman's findingsimplicit in the counterbalancing hypothesis can in part be attributed to later doubtsabout Coleman's methodology (Bowles & Levin, 1968; Smith, 1972). More fundamental,however, is that in the seventies the dominant educational ideology amongst researcherscame to preclude the notion that school mix or indeed any school variable could havea significant impact on school outcomes. The effect of this ideology was to limit research



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The SchoolMix Effect 187on school mix to finding theoretically interesting effects rather than any considered usefulfor policy.

Jencks et al. and the Impasse in School Performance ResearchThe post war liberal belief that schools could equalise students' life chances came underattack in the 1970s. The view that schools could not compensate for society (Bernstein,1970) had it's roots in the failure of liberal educational policies designed to equalise lifechances. The view was taken that compensatory educational programmes and bussing inthe US had failed while in the UK research was published showing that comprehensiveschools did not necessarily improve life chances (Ford, 1969). This afforded theopportunity for both right and left to claim that schools could not promote equality ofopportunity, in the strong sense of equalising life chances. For the right the reason layin the genetically determined nature of intelligence Jensen, 1969); for the Marxist left,schools could not promote equality of opportunity because they were effectively agentsof the ruling class (Bowles & Gintis, 1976) while for left liberals like Jencks Jencks et al.,1972) the route to greater equality of opportunity lay not in education but in other socialand economic policies.In Inequalityencks et al. attempted to show the inadequacy of a reform strategy basedon education by providing an analysis which made use of what Coleman (1973, p. 1524)described as 'skilful but highly motivated use of statistics'. Jencks introduced hisdiscussion of school mix by noting that methodological considerations surrounding thequestion of school mix-the importance of various correlated variables, theirspecification and measurement-had become the subject of a 'minor sociologicalindustry during the 1960s' (p. 151).He argued that while numerous early studies did find strong positive school mixeffects, with better data and more sophisticated use of statistics

the best recent studies have concluded that the socio-economic composition ofa high school has virtually no effect on students aspirations. (1972, p. 152)These 'best recent studies' numbered only two, however (Sewell & Armer, 1966; Hauser,1970), and both were widely regarded at the time as methodologically and theoreticallyunsound [6]. Moreover Jencks dismissed studies which indicated positive mix effectsat elementary level arguing that 'the evidence (was) not very weighty' (p. 103). Onbalance the same would have to be said for Jencks' refutation of the effects of schoolmix.

Supporting the political orientation of researchers like Jencks was a particularapproach to research methodology known as methodological empiricism. This researchapproach, epitomised by the work of Coleman and Jencks, used a quantitative method-ology and emphasised neutrality in a way which left ends n the hands of policy makersand concentrated the efforts of the researcher on the meansby which these ends could beattained (Gouldner, 1971, p. 445). It was an approach directed towards establishing theexistence of school effects rather than the problem of explaining them. The statisticalmeasures used were incapable of unravelling the actual processes occuring within schoolsbecause as Karabel & Halsey (1977, p. 18) note, 'it neglected those problems that did notreadily lend themselves to quantification'.The extent to which researchers ignored the limitations of methodological empiricismor were simply unaware of them is difficult to assess. By 1972, Jencks was certainlybecoming aware of the limitations of this approach but used it nonetheless:



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188 M. ThruppWe have ignored ... the internal life of schools. We have been preoccupiedwith the effects Jencks emphasis) of schooling. ... This has led us to adopt a'factory' metaphor ... Our research has convinced us that this is the wrong wayto think about schools. The long-term effects of schooling seem much lesssignificant to us than they did when we began our work, and the internal lifeof the schools seems correspondingly more important. But we will not explorethe implications of this alternative view in much detail. Instead we will becontent to document our scepticism about the importance of school outputs.(1972, p. 13)

On the other hand there is little evidence of widespread doubt about the validity ofmethodological empiricism amongst school performance researchers until the late 1970s.Overall it appears that during this period researchers were preoccupied by debates overthe measurement and validity of a narrow set of empirical findings, precluding freshexamination of the prevailing problematic from different methodological and theoreticalperspectives.

By the late 1970s the view that schools were powerless to address social inequalitieswas widely accepted. It appeared that any school mix effects which did exist would notmake any difference to school outcomes and could be dismissed. Many researchersagreed with Hauser and his colleagues when they argued that

research on the schooling process could profitably be turned to issues otherthan the explanation of school to school variations in aspirations and achieve-ments. (1976, p. 341)Research into school performance was at an impasse. In political terms it had discountedthe impact of schooling in redressing inequalities of educational opportunity while inmethodological terms it was incapable of investigating possible key school processes, suchas school mix. However, the political climate was also changing as right wing govern-ments took over in Britain and the US. The priority according to equality of opportunitywas superseded by questions concerning efficiency and value for money.

School Effectiveness ResearchAfter the pessimism that characterised the research of the seventies, the popular appealof school effectiveness research rested largely on the ability of its central message-'schools can make a difference'-to speak in a positive and 'commonsense' way to theneeds of educators and policy makers. Since the 'effective schools movement' developedin the late 1970s, the school effectiveness field has spawned a voluminous literature whichhas been widely reviewed both by proponents (Rutter, 1983; Cuttance, 1985; Scheerens,1992; Reynolds, 1992) and critics (Rowan et al., 1983; Purkey & Smith, 1983; Ralph &Fennessey, 1983; Lauder & Khan, 1988; Angus, 1993).School effectiveness research certainly represents a methodological advance overprevious macro-level studies in that it has, to some extent, examined the internalworkings of schools. The field has typically, however, lacked a critical perspective withrespect to the relationship between schools and their intakes. In part this has beenbecause school effectiveness research has eschewed many of the central questions raisedby the earlier studies about the relationship of students' social origins to their schoolachievement and adult life-chances. As Angus (p. 335) recently put it, the schooleffectiveness response to the pessimism of the seventies 'was simply to deny it, assumethat schools do make a difference to student outcomes, and search for indicators of this



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The SchoolMix Effect 189difference'. In part this 'denial' can be explained in terms of the strategies adopted bythe school effectiveness movement. School effectiveness researchers assumed, firstly, that'exemplary' schools exist which achieve considerable academic success regardless ofstudent background, and secondly, that specific, identifiable and reproducible character-istics could explain the success of these schools. By making these assumptions, schooleffectiveness researchers down played the significance of school intakes in a way which,while not intending to do so, chimed well with the right wing shift. This was because theright assumed schools had a much greater ability to control outcomes than had beenpreviously thought, a position which could place a far clearer responsibility on them tobe accountable. It followed for the right that schools could be held directly accountablefor their outcomes.

In order to focus more attention on the potential for positive reform of low SESschools, early effective schools proponents developed a position against what they saw asexcessive concern with the influence of students' background characteristics on achieve-ment. For instance, Ron Edmonds, the respected black educator and a leading pro-ponent of the effective schools movement, argued that

repudiation of the social science notion that family background is the principalcause of pupil acquisition of basic school skills is probably prerequisite tosuccessful reform of public schools for the children of the poor. (1979, p. 23)Ralph & Fennessey (1983, p. 689) countered in an all too rare response:

To repudiate an established relationship between family background andschooling simply because it conflicts with one's goals is neither pragmaticallyproductive nor intellectually respectable behaviour.

Nevertheless, in the conservative climate of the time, the kind of position taken byEdmonds and others in the interests of equity could be relatively easily turned to thecause of efficiency and accountability. It was not long before reference to the impact ofschool intakes on outcomes became seen as an excuse for poor performance.The argument that schools had considerable control over student outcomes required,however, the use of theoretical constructs which could, on the one hand, explain thecausal processes which gave schools their power to determine outcomes while,byimplication, minimising the causal contribution of school intake characteristics. Whilemost-although not all-early school effectiveness studies acknowledged some impact ofindividual social class background on achievement, the notion of school 'climate' or'ethos', was frequently used to explain away processes which might alternatively be seenas the result of school mix [7]. It was typically maintained that school ethos impactedupon students (and teachers) by raising expectations and aspirations and by improvingmotivation and morale.

We need to examine this strategy more closely to determine how plausible it is. Theprivileged explanatory role accorded to school ethos is most important, for it mightreasonably be asked how a school can create an ethos independent of social class mixwhich is so powerful that it can play a major role in overcoming the social disadvantageencountered by many working class and ethnic minority students.In order to do this I begin by looking at the research of Rutter and his associates(Rutter et al., 1979). Their work has achieved a high profile and constitutes a goodexample of early school effectiveness research with respect to these two strategies. InFfteen ThousandHours, Rutter grasped the central causal issue:

The question is whether schools were as they were because of the children they



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190 M. Thruppadmitted or rather whether children behaved in the way they did because ofschool influences. (1979, p. 181)

The question is did he answer it adequately?Rutter found that school 'ethos'-the style and quality of school life, patterns ofstudent and teacher behaviour, management and treatment of students and care ofschool buildings and grounds-primarily explained many between school differences inacademic attainment. He hypothesised that the mean intake characteristics of a school-which he called 'balance of intake'-could be one important variable determining ethos:The presence of a relatively high concentration of pupils in the upper abilitygroups may work to the advantage not only of the pupils themselves but alsoto their peers. In a similar way, a largely disadvantaged intake might depressoutcomes in some cumulative way over and above the effects of disadvantagedbackground on the individual pupil. (1979, p. 154)

Rutter found that both ability and SES mix were weakly but significantly correlated withacademic attainment [8]. He then investigated whether the mix effects identified weredirect or mediated through school processes by examining the relationship between the'balance of intake' measures and the school process variables used by the study. Theseincluded the academic emphasis of schools, teacher actions in lessons, rewards andpunishments, pupil conditions, children's responsibilities and participation in the school,stability of teaching and friendship groups, and staff organisation. As he found nocorrelation between any of these process variables and 'balance of intake', he concluded

however the balance in the intake to a school may be associated with thepupils' outcomes, it does not have its impact ... on school functioning in termsof the process variables we measured. Instead it presumably has some kind ofimpact on the children themselves, probably through its influence on thecomposition and thereby on the attitudes and behaviour of the peer group.(1979, p. 159)

There are three interesting points here. First, note that Rutter formulated the problemin terms of ability mix rather than social class mix. Secondly, although Rutter acknowl-edged a relationship between ability/SES mix and the academic outcome measure, hecan not explain how this relationship works. These are both points to which I shallreturn. Thirdly, and more importantly in terms of this paper, the argument about mixtakes second place to those about ethos in Rutter's work, for his conclusion was that

variations in outcomes were systematically and strongly associated with thecharacteristics of schools as social institutions. The patterns of findings sug-gested ... a causal relationship ... not only were pupils influenced by the waythey were dealt with as individuals, but also there was a group influenceresulting from the ethos of the school as a social institution. (1979, p. 205)

This conclusion is inadequate, however, because the main body of Rutter's analysissuggests that a more balanced treatment of ethos and 'balance of intake' was warranted.Indeed, as both Acton (1980) and Purkey & Smith (1983) have observed, the 'balance ofintake' variable came to assume such importance in Rutter's analysis that it is plausiblethat it, rather than school ethos, was influencing school outcomes.Of course Rutter's is but one study and since it is being claimed that the privilegingof school climate or ethos over social class mix has been a general feature of the schooleffectiveness field we should look at other influential research in this tradition. In a latersummary statement on the findings of effective schools research, Rutter (1983)



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TheSchoolMixEffect 191returned to the question of school ethos, citing the work of Brookover (Brookover et al.,1979). Brookover's study examined two pairs of low SES elementary schools-onepredominantly white, the other largely black. Each pair shared a similar SES mix butdiffered considerably in their mean level of achievement. Following fieldwork in eachschool, observers concluded that there were predictable differences in school climatevariables between the low and high achieving schools in each pair. Brookover attributedthe differences in achievement between each pair of schools to these school climatevariables.

Now the question to be asked here is not whether climate variables do make somepredictable difference, as the issue that some school policies and practices are moreeffective than others is not at stake [9]. Rather the key question is the extentof differencethat climate variables, stemming from school organisational policies and practices, canmake independentf school mix. The central tenet of the school effectiveness literature thatthere are verifiable examples of exemplary schools that achieve high academic standardswith poor urban minority children really underpins this kind of claim. Brookover arguedfor example:

The fact that some low SES white and black schools do demonstrate a highlevel of academic achievement suggests that the socio-economic and racialvariables are not directly causal forces in the school social system. We thereforeconclude that the school social climate and the instructional behaviour associ-ated with it are more direct causal links in the production of achievement.(1979, p. 142)

Central to this type of claim is the issue of whether in fact schools in studies like this aretruly similar in terms of SES composition yet very different in terms of achievement inthe first place. It is apparent that 'exemplary' has been at best a relative term. The meanscore of the exemplary black school in Brookover's study was considerably less than thatof the exemplary white school and the state as a whole. Purkey & Smith (1983, p. 436)pointed out that 'while the black school may have narrowed the gap, the gap remains'.They argued that an 'unusually effective' school serving predominantly low-income andminority students may in fact have considerably lower levels of attainment than a whitemiddle class surburban school because of the pervasive influences of social class onachievement and the possibility that even the 'typical' suburban school has someimportant advantages over the relatively effective inner-city school. Furthermore theysuggested-along with Rowan et al. (1983) and Ralph and Fennessey (1983)-that'exemplary' schools had often been incorrectly identified for other reasons. These includemeasurement error, the use of data that is contradicted by other sets of contemporaneousdata and follow up studies, and the apparently widespread problem of data tamperingwithin schools.

A further kind of evidence for the primacy of school policy over school mix cited byRutter followed his work in Maughan et al. (1980). Rutter used the presence of anincreased correlation between school process measures and pupil measures at the end ofsecondary schooling compared to the beginning, to infer the direction of causality. Asschool process measures were found to correlate more strongly with pupil characteristicsat the end of school than at intake, he argued that teacher behaviour and school climateshape pupil characteristics rather than the other way round. This argument does not,however, take into account the possibility that pupils' orientations towards schoolingmight change over time because of processes that have little to do with school policiesand practices but rather relate to the influence of wider social structures within and



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192 M. Thruppbeyond the school such as awareness of the labour market or the absence of early schoolleavers. For instance Brown (1987) shows the importance of students' views of the locallabour market in determining their attitudes towards their work and towards schoolauthority in their last years of schooling.

The Re-emergence of School Mix as a Theoretical ConstructThe question of school mix has always had a presence in school effectiveness literatureon one level through the notion of 'ability' mix. A recent review of American literatureby Bryk et al. (1990), for instance, suggests that 'schools need a nucleus of motivated andacademically able students to provide a stable institutional base' [10] while Smith &Tomlinson's (1989) study of multi-racial British comprehensives also found a weak effectof mean ability on the general progress of students. In much the same vein, Maughan& Rutter (1987), comparing the effectiveness of selective and non selective British schools,conclude vaguely that while

an unfavourable (ability)balance was no necessaryMaughan & Rutter's empha-sis) bar to attainments,

nonethelessin general, Maughan & Rutter's emphasis) the ability balance in the intakes to... schools showed an association with the intakes of their more able pupils: thesmaller the proportion of able children, the more difficult it was for schools topromote high levels of attainment. (1987, p. 67)While these studies acknowledge 'ability' mix effects, they dismiss or ignore the effects ofsocial class mix. Bryk etal. argue that SES mix effects are 'relatively unimportant' (p. 150)while Smith & Tomlinson do not test for them and Maughan & Rutter fail to mentionthem. We might ask what agenda is being served by such bald discussion of 'ability' mixwithout reference to the effects of social class mix in the face of the large body ofevidence for a strong relationship, at a general level, between school performance andsocial class (Halsey et al., 1980). Analyses of 'ability' mix fail to acknowledge the

advantage gained by various groups in society at the expense of others by taking politicaldimensions out of the question of school mix, thereby rendering it a merely technicalproblem.Nonetheless there are signs that the impact of social class mix is starting to get moreconsideration in recent school effectiveness literature as the idea that schools can makesome difference has become more generally accepted and the proponents of the view lessrigid. For instance 'sensitivity to context' researchers in the US and the Netherlands arehighlighting the limitations of a comprehensive 'recipe' approach to school effectivenessin schools with different intake characteristics. Wimpleberg et al. (1989, p. 87) notes that:

Although many practitioners and academics continue to cling to the classichandful of correlates of effective schools research, extensions of that researchpersist in exposing context conditions that challenge the more literal readingsof the earlier findings.

Hallinger & Murphy (1986); Teddlie et al. (1989) and others have looked particularly atthe impact of SES context on effectiveness correlates [11]. They have demonstrated thatfor the most part high and low mean SES schools have quite different effectivenesscorrelates. This finding contradicts the school effectiveness assumption that effectivenesscorrelates are generalisable across all schools regardless of school mix and renders



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TheSchoolMix Effect 193problematic the notion that school effectiveness can be theorised independently of schoolmix.

It is interesting to note that British research on contextual issues-apart from the workof Willms and his associates in Scotland-is relatively undeveloped in comparison to theUS. Reynolds (1992, p. 16) rightly attributes this to a tendency for British schooleffectiveness researchers to study homogeneous, socially disadvantaged schools ratherthan more widely representative samples that would highlight contextual issues. (Perhapshere we can find at least some of the explanation for the privileging of 'ability' mix oversocial class mix noted above). Narrow sampling seems to be a problem even in SchoolMatters (Mortimore et al., 1988), the most sophisticated and influential British schooleffectiveness study of recent times. While Mortimore and his associates did find someweak effects of the social class composition of school intakes on student achievement (p.223), it is questionable whether their sample had sufficient distribution, range or size toproperly address the issue. Firstly, most of the students in the study were from workingclass homes. Secondly, Mortimore et al. only use two broad social class categories fortheir analysis-manual and non-manual. Thirdly, although they argue that this crudeclassification is necessary because of the small numbers that would result from a moredetailed analysis, they nevertheless base their findings with respect to the contextualinfluence of school intakes on as few as five students in any school in either of these twocrude categories (p. 207).Scheerens (1991, p. 385) suggests that

including contextual variables like student body composition ... can be seen asa relatively new and very interesting development in school effectivenessresearch.

Scheerens is correct in a sense: in the school effectiveness literature an overt concern withcontextual variables is new. However an undercurrent of the much older schoolperformance tradition established by Coleman which viewed school mix as a keytheoretical construct has continued to exist in the sociology of education [12]. Thisperspective has recently been given added prominence by the findings of McPherson &Willms (1987) and Lauder & Hughes (1990) mentioned earlier.McPherson & Willms's longitudinal study examined the impact of comprehensivereorganisation in Scotland between 1970 and 1984. Contrary to critics of variouspersuasions who have maintained that comprehensive schooling has failed, they foundthat comprehensivisation significantly reduced social class inequalities of attainment andimproved average levels of attainment when measured against the inequitable patternestablished in the preceding six decades. Following earlier work (Willms, 1985, 1986),they attribute the decline of SES inequality in attainment to school mix effects. Theyfound that comprehensivisation resulted in the abolition of selection at 12 years, theclosure of many short-course schools, and the redefinition of school catchments which,they argue:

led to a reduction in between school segregation in many communities. Thisreduction allied to the rise in the SES level of the school population, distributedthe benefits of a favourable school context more widely, though it must beadded that these benefits are not well understood. (1987, p. 23)

Lauder & Hughes studied 20 secondary schools with diverse social class mixes andacademic outcomes in Christchurch, New Zealand. Their conclusion was that between-school differences in school outcomes are primarily determined by school mix ratherthan school type. In particular they argue that it is the SES mix that makes the difference



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194 M. Thrupp(the sample was ethnically fairly homogeneous). They found that pupils who attendedone of the five highest mean SES schools in their sample needed, on average, a DIQ of112 to pass their national university entrance exams but that pupils that attended one ofthe five schools with the lowest mean SES required, on average a DIQ of 127 to achievethe same pass (1990, p. 51). In practice this kind of school mix effect meant that workingclass pupils with similar levels of prior achievement were on average leaving the lowestmean SES schools without national exam passes but were gaining five national examin-ation passes from the schools with the highest mean SES.

A Case for School Mix?: Questions worth askingThe preceding discussion has served to illustrate that the relationship between school mixand school achievement has been an enduring problem in quantitative research onschool performance and student achievement. While there has been some research tosuggest that school mix has no significant effect, the limitations of that research cannotbe ignored. On balance, taking into account the dispositions of researchers in this areain the past, there does seem to be at least a prima facie case for the existence of asignificant relationship between school mix and school achievement.That accepted, six related questions appear to form a research agenda around theproblem of the impact of school mix. These are questions about the existence, size,causes and universality of a school mix effect, as well as questions about the policyimplications of a school mix effect for both individual schools and national educationsystems. They include:(i) Does a genuine school mix effect exist or is it a proxy for some other variable?

The statistical correlations found between school mix and successful school processesdo not prove the existence of a genuine school mix effect because we cannot be sure ofthe direction of causal influence. The correlation could theoretically come about becauseof measurement error (Gray et al., 1990) or because (a) successful school processes cause'school mix'; (b), 'school mix' causes successful school processes; or (c), some thirdvariable causes both. For example one school variable that might influence school mixmight be the calibre of the school principal. If good principals attract a disproportionatenumber of pupils from relatively privileged families because of their standard of schoolleadership we have an instance of case (a). If schools with a disproportionate number ofpupils from relatively privileged families attract good principals because of the school mixwe have an example of case (b). If schools in certain parts of a city attract disproportion-ate numbers of good principals and pupils from relatively privileged families because oftheir geographic location (e.g. they are in high cost residential areas) we have an exampleof case (c). The difficulty with this question as a whole is that the problem of causaldirection is a particularly stubborn one that is likely to continue to resist any kind ofconclusive answer.(ii) If a school mix effect does exist, how significant is it?

We have seen that much of the quantitative literature suggests that a school mix effect,if it does exist, is very small while other research attributes a much greater degree ofinfluence to school mix. The importance of any school mix effect will clearly depend onits size in relation to other variables.(iii) If a school mix effect does exist, how is it caused?



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TheSchoolMix Effect 195For instance, would a school mix effect be caused (a), directly in some way by studentsfrom different social classes being in contact with each other at school (what might becalled the 'differential peers' hypothesis) or (b), by the impact of school policies and

practices that are possible in relatively mixed schools but not in more working classschools (the 'differential instruction' hypothesis), or (c), both of the above? [13]. Thequestion of the causal mechanisms underlying the school mix effect is a critical one infurther developing the case for or against school mix, a point to which I shall returnshortly.(iv) If a school mix effect does exist, is it universally optimal or working class preferential?

A number of writers have claimed that while typically middle class strong achieversmay lose to some degree by mixing with largely working class low achievers, the gainsof the weaker students would far outweigh the loss of the stronger (Summers & Woolfe,1977; Henderson et al., 1978; Lauder & Hughes, 1990). Yet Willms (1986) argues thatschool composition is likely to be a zero sum game-that all students achieve better athigher SES schools such that balancing school mix would have a negative effect onpresent levels of middle class achievement. This is a key issue because a universallyoptimal effect is likely to make policies to balance school mix much more acceptable thanan effect which could only achieve working class success at considerable expense to thosewho are currently successful.(v) If a school mix effect does exist, to what degree can schools promote successful schoolcharacteristics irrespective of their mix?We might ask whether the purposeful academic ethos or climate that Rutter andothers have argued is a characteristic of successful schools is something that all schoolscan emulate or whether its existence depends on intake characteristics. The likelihoodthat many school policies and practices follow student characteristics has been raisedrecently by Glass & Matthews (1991) who suggest that Chubb and Moe's argument that'school organisation is primarily a cause of student achievement and not a result of it'(1990, p. 114) is an article of faith, and by Kreft (1993, p. 125) who considers it likelythat 'the influence of the student body is crucial to the creation and maintenance of abeneficial school climate'. Certainly there are a number of recent findings to substantiatethe view that intakes strongly influence school policies. Kilgore (1991), for example,found that tracking policies reflect the SES mix of schools, while Raudenbush et al. (1992)argue that teachers' sense of self-efficacy is related to the kinds of students they teach.Thus an important question that would be highlighted by research into the effects ofschool mix is the extent to which schools are able to insulate themselves from the widersocial processes their intakes represent or are dependent upon them.(vi) If a school mix effect does exist, what implications does this hold for nationaleducation policy?

A central feature of national education systems is between-school SES segregation,often based on residential segregation. The effective schools literature has generally takenthe effects of this as 'given', a contextual factor not able to be addressed by educationalpolicies even if it is significant. For instance, Scheerens (1992, p. 93) argues that 'highnumbers of disadvantaged pupils and ethnic minorities push down the performance ofthe entire pupil population. Because the central concern is with the construc-tion of "effective schools" no further attention will be given to these contextualcharacteristics.' This kind of approach fails to acknowledge, however, that national



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196 M. Thruppeducation policies may affect school mix. For instance, recent market policies such as'Open Enrolment' are seen by critics as likely to intensify between-school segregation(Bowe et al., 1992). Given that the existence of a significant school mix effect wouldsuggest the importance of policies to balance school mix through state intervention, thequestion of school mix is central to recent debate over the role of the state in education.

Theorising the Causal Mechanisms Underlying School Mix: a way forwardAt a time when the school effectiveness literature is opening up and entertaining thenotion of school mix (Sheerens, 1991) and noticeable political shifts in the US andelsewhere appear likely to relax some of the constraints of the last decade, it isappropriate to ask if there is some way in which the research on school mix can beadvanced. If this is the agenda, then it has been a theme of this paper that we need towiden the methodological perspectives used to explore school mix. For so long as theimpact of school mix continues to be seen as a largely technical problem which merelyrequires a more rigorous, precise and well controlled version of the same large scalequantitative approach, the questions posed above are likely to remain unanswered. Thisis because the methods currently favoured by school effectiveness researchers, despitetheir increasingly sophisticated multi-level nature, will fail to capture the subtle processesrepresented by the concept of a school mix effect.Given the problems inherent in more of the same, investigation of possible causalmechanisms through micro-level qualitative methodology is likely to be a more reward-ing direction for further research. In effect this approach would attempt to answerquestions about the existence and significance of a school mix effect by demonstratinghow it could work [14]. Although the resulting analysis would be unlikely to providegeneralisable answers to the stubborn causal questions at the heart of the concept ofschool mix, it should nonetheless serve to illuminate the causal mechanisms working inparticular contexts.There is some support within existing school effectiveness literature for such a researchagenda. As we saw earlier, Rutter could not properly explain how 'balance of intake'effects worked: he concluded (1979, p. 155) that 'our analysis can only represent thebeginnings of attempts to unravel the network of interacting influences'. Others in theschool effectiveness field over the last three decades have also noted the need for detailedresearch into the mechanisms underlying school mix effects (Campbell & Alexander,1965; Erbring & Young, 1979; Clifford & Heath, 1984; Willms, 1985; Bryk et al., 1990)yet it is noteworthy that this challenge has not, to date, been taken up by schooleffectiveness researchers.

It is also clear, however, that the problem of theoretical and methodological isolationhas not been confined to the school effectiveness field as the task of unpacking school mixhas also been ignored by qualitative researchers. Nonetheless their work may indirectlyprovide some valuable starting points. For instance, the ethnographies of Lacey (1970),Willis (1977), Ball (1981), Brown (1987) andJones (1991) mentioned earlier are particu-larly useful for illustrating the problems and the potential presented by qualitativeanalyses for the 'differential peers' hypothesis [15].

Underpinning these ethnographies is the theory that society is deeply structured byclass, gender and ethnic relations and that school subcultures reflect this. Class basedschool subcultures are seen to interact in a variety of ways with the organisation andculture of schools to produce different outcomes for different subcultural groups. Fromthis view schools primarily reflect dominant or ruling class culture, the culture of high



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TheSchoolMix Effect 197SES groups such as those from professional and managerial backgrounds. It follows thatstudents from high SES backgrounds have an organic class relationship to the school(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Connell et al., 1982). In Bourdieu's terms, ruling classstudents find that the school's values, expectations and perspectives are largely consistentwith their own world views. These students are amenable towards and accepted by theschool such that they are able to convert their cultural capital into high credentials. Asthey usually perceive the school working in their interests, they generally take a positive,normative approach to the social and academic goals of the school. Working classstudents on the other hand will usually be instrumental or alienated rather thannormative because, as a result of their significantly different class cultural background,they lack the cultural capital needed to identify with and/or be favourably received bythe dominant ruling class culture of the school. Consequently many working classstudents struggle with their schooling and most fail to achieve academic qualifications.Now with respect to this kind of analysis it might be argued that in a school with areasonably balanced mix, the predominant ethos of the school and of the high SESstudents with cultural capital would somehow 'rub off' on working class students, liftingtheir academic performance compared to their counterparts in predominantly workingclass schools. That is, the normal working class subcultural response to schooling is insome way modified or altered in schools with a more balanced SES mix [16]. Yet howthis might happen depends very much on the manner in which the subculturesthemselves are theorised. This issue, a central concern of the ethnographic literature onschool subcultures, relates to Rutter's question about causal direction cited earlier:whether children influence schools or schools influence children. It translates in thiscontext as the question of whether (i), subcultures result from the influence of the school;or (ii), subcultures have already been determined by children's class cultural backgroundsso that the school makes little difference; or (iii), subcultures result from the interactionof both school and class cultural processes.The first view is taken by Lacey (1970) and Ball (1981). They argue that thedevelopment of school subcultures stem from the internal sorting and selecting arrange-ments of schools [17]. Over time, pupils placed in low streams/bands (invariably workingclass) develop anti-school values while those students placed in upper streams/bands(generally middle class) exhibit pro-school and pro-academic attitudes. Lacey and Ball'swork implies that working class students prefer to take a normative or at leastinstrumental orientation to school but are constrained from doing so by school influenceswhich cause them to develop negative, anti-school attitudes and values.It follows that if it is the school that 'cools out' working class pupils then it may be themodification of school processes in some way that allows working class students toimprove their achievement in schools with a broad school mix. Most obviously, it mightbe thought that schools with a broad school mix have less internal selection and thereforeare less likely to alienate students. However significant school mix effects have often beenfound even where schools are formally stratified [18]. This model may also point todirect rather than indirect influences of high SES peers as the source of school mixeffects. Perhaps despite chool selection processes that alienate working class students, thepresence within the school of large numbers of high SES students is helpful to workingclass students, influences their aspirations and lifts subsequent working class academicperformance. The problem with this hypothesis is that Lacey, Ball and others haveshown that there is little contact between working class and high SES students in schools.Within classrooms students from different social class backgrounds are kept apart by



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198 M. Thruppschool differentiationbut they are also hostile and distantout of classtimebecause theirfriendshipgroupsbecome polarised.In contrastto this approach,Willis(1977) arguesthe second view, that workingclassstudents fail not because school processeswork againstthem but because of their ownclass cultural characteristics.His position is that the 'lads' prefer to take an alienatedorientation o theirschooling.Thus Willis'saccountrecognisesthatworkingclasspupilsmightbe unwilling o succeedacademicallyratherthan unableto do so. From thispointof view a school mix effect would only occur becauseworkingclass studentsare less ableto form an alienatedsubculturen schools:greaterworkingclass success n sociallymixedschools would essentiallybe imposed.This might occur because the relative balance of power between the class-basedorientationsof studentsin schools and thereforethe effectivenessof school processesismodifiedby school mix. In sociallymixed schools,workingclass studentsmay achievebetter academic resultsbeca-use hey are forced to meet the more efficient and moreacademic demands of the school created by its higher mean SES mix. An alienatedorientationwould be more difficult o sustain here for several reasons.Firstly,given thelarge scale of compliance,the general administrative/disciplinaryystem of the schoolwill be able to be more effective,more demandingof resisters.Secondly, teachersmaybe able to give more time and energy to 'difficult'pupils given that they are less likelyto be swamped by motivational,behavioural and learning difficulties han those whoteach in predominantlyworkingclass schools.A furtherreasonwhy resistancewould bemore difficult n sociallymixed schools is that there wouldsimplybe fewer studentswithalienated orientations o provide supportto resisters.The situationmight be similar tothat noted by Willis in the years prior to the 'coming out' of the 'lads':

Even if there is some form of social divisionin the junior school, in the firstyears of the secondaryschool everyone it seems is an 'ear'ole'.Even the fewwho come to the school with a developed delinquent eye for the sociallandscapebehavein a conformistway because of the lackof anyvisiblesupportgroup. (1977, p. 60)

This model poses difficulties or the concept of a school mix effect because if workingclass studentsare inherentlyalienatedit is doubtfulwhetherschools could exert such apowerful nfleuncethat they could overcomethat alienation.In any case,Willis'sanalysisis clearlyflawed. He dismissesas ideologicaldupes the great majorityof workingclassstudentswho do not openly resist school. Furthermore,his work does not explain whyschool resistancedoesn't surface much earlier.Given that it is being viewed as a classculturalattribute,an alienatedorientationmight be expected to show up in the earlyschool years but there is no evidence of this.The third,interactionalview is offeredby Brown(1987)andJones (1991)who discardthe dichotomyinherent in the previous approacheswhereby pupils are seen as eitheraccepting,normativeand pro-schoolor rejecting,alienatedand anti-school.They arguethat the majorityof workingclass 'ordinarykids' fit into neither of these categories.Rather they comply with the school and go along with its processesfor instrumentalreasons:as a means to workingclass ends.Brownusefullyproposes he notionof 'framesof reference' FORs) o highlighta rangeof workingclassresponses o schooling. Workingclasspupilsare typicallyseen to eitheraccept the school, (a normative 'gettingout' FOR), reject it (an alienated 'gettingin'FOR) or, mostcommonly, ust complywith it (aninstrumentalgettingon' FOR). FORs,the focal concerns of working class youth, represent different selections from the



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TheSchoolMix Effect 199various class cultural and educational resources available to working class youth. Brownargues that working class academic success depends neither solely on pupils' attitudes toschool nor on the evaluations of students by teachers but on the interplay etween pupils'collective understandings of being in school and the school's own selection processes.Brown's approach presents a number of further implications for a school mix effectbeyond those posed by the previous models. It suggests that working class students makevarious types of educational decisions based on the cultural and educational resourcesavailable to them and that their school orientations represent some kind of selection fromthose resources. The model implies, therefore, that a school mix effect could work indifferent ways and to different extents for different groups of working class students. Forinstance, it may be that for students with a normative 'out' FOR school mix is importantbecause it extends the resources available, given that, as Lacey and Ball would have it,they are already positively disposed towards academic success. For students with analienated 'in' FOR, school mix might overcome their cultural resistance in imposed waysas described in relation to Willis's work. However it is for the 'ordinary kids' with aninstrumental 'on' FOR that school mix may be particularly significant. These pupilsusually comply with their schooling, that is they accept the school's offerings in a kindof passive, non-decision making way. In this case the influence of higher SES studentsmay 'rub off as the exposure to more cultural capital modifiesheir cultural attitudes,values, knowledge and world views and leads to greater academic success.

ConclusionQualitative analyses pose problems for the idea of a school mix effect but also richpossibilities when compared to the offerings of the school effectiveness field. They suggestthat one fruitful approach to understanding how a school mix effect could work wouldbe to examine how school mix modifies the school based resources available to differentgroups of working class pupils (the material and cultural offerings of both the school andits student body) thus altering the way students with different orientations make decisionsbased on those resources. Given the present state of our knowledge about the effects ofschool mix as well as the recent development of neo-liberal market policies in educationlikely to intensify intake differences between schools, such research is needed urgently.

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Hugh Lauder, Phil Brown and Roger Dale for their constructivecomments on an earlier version of this paper.

Correspondence:artin Thrupp, School of Education, University of Waikato, Private Bag3105, Hamilton, New Zealand. Email: [email protected]

[1] The school mix effect might be caused by process variables merely associated with different social classmixes, such as teacher quality, rather than being more directly causal.[2] Coleman's work is often ambiguous as to whether he is attributing achievement gains primarily to theeffects of students' ethnic, social class or prior achievement characteristics. He frequently combines twoor more of these variables in his discussion. For instance Coleman (1990, p. 212) discusses the assumptionthat 'integration-at least in majority middle class white schools-would automatically improve theachievement of lower class black children'. This limitation in Coleman's work appears to result from the



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200 M. Thrupplimitations of methodological empiricismnoted here-that it focuses on school effects without muchconsiderationof causalmechanisms.

[3] For a review of researchon the effectsof desegregationon studentachievementsee Mahard& Crain(1983). See Coleman (1990, pp. 165-235) for a discussionof desegregationand resegregation.Recentresearchhas raisedthe questionwhethertheparticulardesignof desegregationplansmayhaveinfluencedthe extent of resegregation:Welch (1987)and Carr& Zeigler(1990)suggestthat this is likelybut Smockand Wilson (1991)are less optimistic.

[4] See for exampleAlexander & Eckland(1975).[5] In recent years Coleman has moved away from the positionthat school desegregations likelyto bringaboutachievementgainsfordisadvantagedminorityyouth.He suggests 1990,pp. 212-213) 'Itprobablyis true that desegregationunder optimalconditions will increaseachievement. But that is not the point:

very likelyany school changes,underoptimalconditions,will have this effect.What we must look for isthe effect on disadvantaged hildrenthat occurs under the varietyof conditions n which desegregationis actually carried out'. Coleman raises two issues here. That the practicaleffects of policy on realsituationsis what counts seems well-founded.On the other hand, school mix may well be a moresignificantvariablethan Coleman himself has come to allow.

[6] For the controversystemmingfrom Sewell and Armer'sstudysee the October 1966 issue of AmericanSociologicalReview,forHauser see Barton(1970).These critiquesgenerally ocus on the way schoolmixis specified.Sewell and Armer,for instance,creditedthe socialclasscompositionof the high school withonly that part of the variancein college plans that remainedafter the relationshipbetween abilityandcollege plans had alreadybeen takeninto account.This procedurewas disputed by Turner,Boyle andMichaelbecauseit assumedthat studentsattendedhigh SES schools becauseof theirabilityand ignoredthe possibility hat the social classof the school affectedability.They reanalysedSewell and Armer'sdatato show the greaterpercentageof variance in college plans that resultedfrom takinginto account therelationshipbetween ability and school social class composition.This study also differed from mostpreviousworkin thatit measured he SES compositionof neighbourhoods, ather hanthe mix of specificschools.[7] Brookoveret al. (1979) usefullyillustratethe developmentof the main causal argument used by theeffectiveschools movement to privilegeethos or climate over the effectsof school composition.Theirstudy began by lookingbackto the work of McDill & Rigsby (1973)on schoolclimate. Howeverinsteadof arguing with McDill that normative climate variables associated ith school composition causedachievementvariance across schools, Brookover and colleagues followed Hauser (1971) to take thisargumenta step further and suggestthat normativeclimate variableswere really relativelyndependentfschool composition.In their large scale analysisof variablesdrawnfrom Michiganelementaryschools,they found that aftercontrolling or SES and ethnicity,schoolclimatevariablesstilldifferedsignificantlybetween schools and that achievement seemed to be linked to these differences n normativeclimateratherthan school composition.Now, althoughBrookoverand his colleaguesadmitted that this findingdid not constitute'sufficientproof to eliminate school mix as a causal variablebecauseof the possibleinfluenceof thirdvariables, hey still used it to assertthe view (pp. 141-142) that 'school climateratherthan family background as reflected in student body composition has the more direct effect onachievement'.

[8] Rutter et al. are able to suggestthat the effect of abilitymix on academic outcomes is more significantthan social class mix and largely independentof it because of the samplingproceduresused. Theirsample,comprisingworkingclass South London schools,was relativelyhomogenous.Had they chosena more heterogenous ample t is mostlikelythattheywouldhave foundthat, in general,there is a strongcorrelationbetween social class and school achievementoutcomes.

[9] HoweverI would arguewith Hallinger& Murphy(1986)and Teddlie etal. (1989)thatparticular choolpolicies and practicesare effectivewith particular ypes of students nsteadof with all studentsas schooleffectivenessresearchershave frequentlyclaimed.

[10] They cite in particular he multi-levelworkof Barr &Dreeben (1983)who, in a relativelydetailedstudyof primaryclassrooms,show that the characteristics f a student group influence teachers'work to aconsiderableextent and that classroomswith a predominantlyow abilitymix are the most problematicteachingenvironments.

[11] Hallinger& Murphy(1986, p. 347) found for instance that 'High and low SES effectiveschools (are)characterisedby differentpatternsof curricularbreadth, time allocation,goal emphasis,instructionalleadership, opportunitiesfor student reward, expectationsfor student achievement and home-schoolrelations'.

[12] See for instanceSummers & Wolfe (1977),Hendersonet al. (1978) and Shavit & Williams(1984).



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TheSchoolMixEffect 201[13] See Dreeban & Barr(1988)and the responseby Hallinan(1988)for two perspectiveson these different

hypotheses. Thrupp (1993) also examines these issues.[14] This is, of course,employinga realist ramework o examine a questionwhichhas emergedfromresearch

undertakenwithin a positivistparadigm. Epistemologicalblinkershave considerablyhinderedresearchinto the effects of school mix.[15] These ethnographiesae also useful for exploring he 'differentialnstruction'hypothesisalthoughperhapsto a lesserextent. See for instance Gamoran & Berends(1987) and Thrupp (1993).[16] This is suggested by Lauder & Hughes (1990).[17] Hammersley(1992) provides a useful analysisof Lacey and Ball's 'differentiation-polarisation'heory.[18] In Lauder& Hughesstudy,forexample,virtuallyall the schoolswere banded. On the otherhand, Shavit& Williams(1985) suggestthat school mix effectsmay be largely replacedby group mix effectswhereschools are internallystratified. t might alsobe, of course,that sociallymixedschoolsare less alienatingin more subtleways for workingclass students than formalschool arrangements uggest.

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WIMPLEBERG,. K., TEDDLIE,C. & STRI

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