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Abstract: Research in the sociology of education highlights the ambiguous role that schools may play in social stratification. On the one hand, critical perspectives view schools as institutions of social reproduction that generate inequality by allocating students to unequal learning environments. On the other hand, positive accounts of schooling view schools as a force of equalization as schools create more standardized and equal learning opportunities than non-school environments. Prior research has largely adjudicated these two perspectives using the Seasonal Comparison Design (SCD), which examines learning rates during the school year and summer break. We extend this literature using the Differential Exposure Approach (DEA), a research design that leverages random variation in test and birth dates to identify the causal effect of school-year exposure on children’s learning. Importantly, the DEA also allows us to reconstruct seasonal patterns and examine whether patterns of inequality in the summer are caused by school closure or the summer itself. We apply the DEA to data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort of 2011 (ECLS-K:2011), which has been commonly used in previous SCD studies. Preliminary findings demonstrate the substantial effects of school exposure on children’s learning. The equalization hypothesis found some support, as schooling effects were larger for socioeconomically disadvantaged children but only for the kindergarten year (and not for first grade). In addition, the reconstruction of seasonal patterns through the DEA highlights the vulnerability of the SCD with respect to testing the school equalization hypothesis.

The Sociology Seminar Series for Trinity Term is convened by Richard Breen.  For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.