Background
Lucas, Samuel Roundfield was born on February 14, 1963 in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States. Son of Fredrick Noel Lucas and hazel Beatrice Frazier.
( As debate rages over the widening and destructive gap b...)
As debate rages over the widening and destructive gap between the rich and the rest of Americans, Claude Fischer and his colleagues present a comprehensive new treatment of inequality in America. They challenge arguments that expanding inequality is the natural, perhaps necessary, accompaniment of economic growth. They refute the claims of the incendiary bestseller The Bell Curve (1994) through a clear, rigorous re-analysis of the very data its authors, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, used to contend that inherited differences in intelligence explain inequality. Inequality by Design offers a powerful alternative explanation, stressing that economic fortune depends more on social circumstances than on IQ, which is itself a product of society. More critical yet, patterns of inequality must be explained by looking beyond the attributes of individuals to the structure of society. Social policies set the "rules of the game" within which individual abilities and efforts matter. And recent policies have, on the whole, widened the gap between the rich and the rest of Americans since the 1970s. Not only does the wealth of individuals' parents shape their chances for a good life, so do national policies ranging from labor laws to investments in education to tax deductions. The authors explore the ways that America--the most economically unequal society in the industrialized world--unevenly distributes rewards through regulation of the market, taxes, and government spending. It attacks the myth that inequality fosters economic growth, that reducing economic inequality requires enormous welfare expenditures, and that there is little we can do to alter the extent of inequality. It also attacks the injurious myth of innate racial inequality, presenting powerful evidence that racial differences in achievement are the consequences, not the causes, of social inequality. By refusing to blame inequality on an unchangeable human nature and an inexorable market--an excuse that leads to resignation and passivity--Inequality by Design shows how we can advance policies that widen opportunity for all.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691028982/?tag=2022091-20
(What has happened since formal tracking was dismantled in...)
What has happened since formal tracking was dismantled in U.S. high schools? In this provocative book, SFamuel Lucas reveals that many unintended consequences actually served to transform and submerge a stubborn system of in-school inequality. Drawing on nationally representative data and highly sophisticated methodologies, Lucas examines how the contemporary curricular structure works, including the scope of the structure, mobility within the structure, how an individual's location in the structure is socially patterned, and the consequences of these locations for a student's college entry and career path. These issues are then skillfully linked to long-standing debates about stratification processes within schools and the relationship between schools and Western societies. Appendixes at the end of the book include detailed information about the author's methods of analyses, providing an excellent model for further research.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807737984/?tag=2022091-20
Lucas, Samuel Roundfield was born on February 14, 1963 in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States. Son of Fredrick Noel Lucas and hazel Beatrice Frazier.
Bachelor in Religion, Haverford (Pennsylvania) College, 1986. Master of Science in Sociology, University Wisconsin, 1990. Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology, University Wisconsin, 1994.
Assistant survey director National Opinion Research Center, Chicago, 1986-1988. Assistant professor University California, Berkeley, 1993-1994, 94-99, associate professor, since 1999. Member sociology advisory panel National Science Foundation, since 1999.
Member technical review panel Education Longitudinal Study, since 2000. Member committee on representation of minority children in special education, National Academy of Sciences, since 1999.
( As debate rages over the widening and destructive gap b...)
(What has happened since formal tracking was dismantled in...)
Member American Sociological Association, International Sociological Association (research committee 28), Population Association American, American Educational Research Association.