Selection and the economic value of education: A barrier to reducing the SES achievement gap?

Abstract

Due to the role that schools play in determining the status of the future occupations of their children (i.e., the selection function of education), high socioeconomic status (SES) parents may not always be supportive of interventions that would reduce the SES achievement gap. In four experiments, we measured the support of parents (Ntotal = 1966) for implementing an equalizing (and, in Experiments 2 and 3, an inequality-maintaining) intervention. In Experiments 1 and 2, a negative association between subjective SES and support for the equalizing intervention was found when the selection function was made salient, an effect that was also observed in Experiment 4 but only for Right-leaning participants. In Experiment 3, where the salience of selection was held constant, we found a negative association between subjective SES and support for the equalizing intervention, but not the inequality-maintaining intervention.