Handicapping The Handicapped: Decision Making In Students’ Educational Careers

HANDICAPPING THE HANDICAPPED Handicapping the Handicapped DECISION MAKING IN STUDENTS' EDUCATIONAL CAREERS Hugh Mehan, Alma Hertweck, and J. Lee Meihls STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Stanford, California 1986 Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 1986 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America CIP data appear at the end of the book To Norma, who made it all possible PREFACE Like other researchers who are concerned with issues of equality and inequality in American society, we are trying to understand how it is that people attain places or positions in our society. This concern has led us to consider the role of schooling on students' careers while they are in school. The question of whether schooling makes a difference in people's lives is the essence of a larger, traditional sociological topic, that of social stratification. In its several aspects, the question is of concern also to researchers in the field, to organizational theorists, and to students of decision making and problem solving, to all of whom this book is addressed. Therefore, we examine the prevailing models of social stratification, focusing on the views of the role schooling plays on later life outcomes that are inherent in these models. The dominant methodological approach to status-attainment research has been the quantitative analysis of sample surveys of individuals. This paradigm has been successful in showing the location and movement of individuals within the stratification system. It has been less successful, however, in enlightening us about the processes and mechanisms of stratification and the role of institutional arrangements in the stratification system. We consider the issue of the processes of stratification by reviewing studies of the social organization of schooling. These studies, conducted primarily from an ethnographic research perspective, inform .us about some of the practices that operate in schools to stratify students. The community and the school system that we studied pro- viii Preface vided numerous insights into organizational decision making and the construction of educational careers, the educational system as a whole-including the interplay between federal and local levels of education, and between the school district and interpersonal contexts within the district. Our analysis eventually came to focus on three decision-making events: those that take place in the classrooms, educational testing situations, and placement committee meetings. In conclusion, we have stated the implications of this study for social stratification theory, decision-making theory, and the status of concepts such as educational handicap. The analysis of institutional practices shows us how internal school mechanisms mediate the relationship between socioeconomic status, educational achievement, and status attainment. The detailed analysis of decision making within the educational institution demonstrates the limitations of the rational model and the importance of looking at organizational practices, standard operating procedures, availability of resources, and the cognitive categories generated by members of the institution. Educational handicaps are found to be a consequence of the enactment of these institutional practices and organizational routines in the face of legal, fiscal, and practical constraints. The research that underlies this volume was made possible through a grant from the National Institute of Education (NIE G-78-0177), which of course does not necessarily endorse any of the positions we have taken. The special help of Gail McColl and Marc Tucker is gratefully acknowledged. Michael Cole and the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, also provided impo