Negotiating Opportunities : How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School

In Negotiating Opportunities, Jessica McCrory Calarco traces class differences in student behaviors from their origins at home to their consequences in school and demonstrates how complex interactions between children, parents, and teachers collectively contribute to classroom inequality. Drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, she reveals that middle-class students secure advantages over their working-class peers by requesting support in excess of what is fair or required and by persuading teachers to grant their requests.