Who Gets Ahead?
Hassenger, Robert
In Brief Who Gets Ahead? The Determinants of Economic Success in AMERICA, by Christopher Jencks and Associates, Basic Books, $17.50,397pp. In 1972, Jencks and his colleagues' Inequality was...
...in 1979, the reference is to (unmeasured) "attitudes, values, and behavior...
...With Coleman, Jencks found that no disparity of educational resources accounted for differential black and white achievement in the schools (as had been anticipated, in the original research...
...reanalyzed the data from Coleman's national study, undertaking—in their book's subtitle—"a reassessment of the effect of family and schooling in America...
...have always been a key mechanism of upward social mobility in America...
...FATHER JAMES NEAFSEY, S.J., teaches at the Institute for Spirituality and Worship at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley...
...The reader who plows through Who Gets Ahead...
...ROBERT HASSENGER Commonweal: 414...
...These conclusions did not endear Jencks to either the educational establishment or civil rights advocates...
...The book bristles with statistical analyses, and its finely-shaded conclusions cannot be adequately summarized here...
...The bottom line: family background, particularly father's occupational status, is a much more significant predictor of success than measured IQ, achievement test scores, or amount of schooling...
...In 1972, Jencks attributed these residual effects to "luck...
...FATHER LEOJ.O'DONOVAN,S.J.,is pro/ewcr of systematic theology at Weston School of Theology in Massachusetts...
...But much was left unexplained...
...is Jencks's answer to his critics, an exhaustive analysis from twelve data bases of the effects of four types of variables—family background, cognitive skills, personality traits, and years of schooling—on economic success...
...They found it easier to dismiss or vilify Jencks, and to ignore the increasing evidence of such revisionist social scientists as Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gjntis, Michael Katz, Colin Greer, and Diane Ravitch, than to abandon the longcherished myth that the schools are and REVIEWERS TAMAR JACOBY is an editorial assistant at the New York Review of Books...
...But the data cannot be exorcised...
...will not discover much about "the determinants of economic success in America," except what they are apparently not...
...Cheryl RIVERS if a professor of English at Manhattanville College...
...Jencks et al...
...Jencks resists drawing social policy conclusions, which are apparently to be in a forthcoming volume...
...ROBERT HASSENGER is on the Staff of the Coordinating Center of Empire State College...
...In 1972, Jencks and his colleagues' Inequality was one of the most significant—and controversial — products of the cottage industry that has flourished since James C. Coleman's HEW-sponsoreSd Report, Equality of Educational Opportunity (1966...
...But he will find considerable evidence to counter our century-long at4 Julv 1980: 413 tempt to solve in the next generation, through children, the social problems their parents could riot...
...Inequality attempted "to show in some detail that traditional strategies for equalizing individual earning power will not work," and ended with a muted call for "what some countries call socialism...
...But the Jencks group went further, concluding that racial desegregation and an elusive socio-economic desegregation would have only a marginal effect on equalizing either school success or life chances...
...If equality is what is sought—and this remains to be demonstrated—more direct means, such as income redistribution, will be required...
Vol. 107 • July 1980 • No. 13
