The present structure of rewards in high schools produces a response on the part of an adolescent social system which effectively impedes the process of education.

The results indicate that heterogeneity of race and heterogeneity of family educational background can increase the achievement of children from weak educational backgrounds with no adverse effect on children from strong educational backgrounds.

Children from a given family background, when put in schools of different social compositions, will achieve at quite different levels.

As an example, one of the schools I have been studying is too small to compete effectively in most sports, but participates with vigor each year in the state music contests.

Cultural dominance of middle-class norms prevail in middle-class schools with a teacher teaching toward those standards and with students striving to maintain those standards.

Particular individuals who might never consider dropping out if they were in a different high school might decide to drop out if they attended a school where many boys and girls did so.

A child's learning is a function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher.