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Evidence-Based Claim: Schooling reinforces inequality for Black and Brown students with disabilities through exclusionary practices and deficit labels, but humanizing pedagogy and culturally affirming spaces offer pathways for resistance and healing (Annamma et al., 2013; Annamma et al., 2020; Kelly, 2020; Salazar, 2013).

Description: I’ll use this claim to show how schools often contribute to the reproduction of inequality by labeling and disciplining Black and Brown students with disabilities in ways that reflect deeper systems of racism and ableism. At the same time, I want to highlight how change is possible when educators create spaces that are culturally affirming and grounded in care; students can then feel seen, supported, and empowered. By drawing on DisCrit and humanizing pedagogy, I’ll argue that schools don’t have to uphold inequality; they can actively work against it.

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1. Write an evidence-based claim with in-text citation (no direct quotes).

2. Briefly describe how you will use this claim to further your argument on social reproduction/transformation of inequality

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Social capital is a form of cultural capital by which people benefit from human connections in their environments (Yosso, 2005).

Explanation: First-generation college students benefit from social capital when they form networks with other students to help them navigate college life, thus disrupting low-retention rates that have reinforced inequality in college settings. Social capital helps first-generation students can succeed on a more equitable level.

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CRT makes a stronger argument if we want to understand how inequality is reproduced.

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Educational systems often reinforce existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies through unequal distribution of resources, tracking, and deficit-based assumptions, which aligns with Critical Race Theory's assertion that racism is deeply embedded in institutional structures (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995).

This claim will serve as a foundational point in my argument that schooling functions as a mechanism of social reproduction rather than transformation. I will build on this by examining specific educational practices such as curriculum bias, disciplinary disparities, and the underrepresentation of culturally sustaining pedagogies that reflect and perpetuate structural inequality. This will allow me to argue that meaningful transformation requires systemic shifts informed by CRT, including policy changes and the amplification of marginalized students’ voices.

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The unequal placement of African American students in inclusive classrooms can unintentionally reinforce educational inequality when educators overlook cultural and familial strengths, leading to biased interpretations of behavior and ability(Harry, Klingner, & Hart, 2005).

Explanation:

Educators often misinterpret the cultural practices and strengths of African American families through a deficit perspective. The strengths of African American families were often invisible to school personnel who interpreted family behaviors through a deficit lens. This misinterpretation can result in over referral to special education inclusive classroom, limiting access to general education, and reinforcing structural disparities.

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Parenting style can also contribute to linguistic capital and how students develop communicatively (Lareau, 2003)

Explanation:

Concerted cultivation is a parenting style where children participate in organized extracurricular activities and negotiations are encouraged within their household. Converted cultivation parenting style promotes language development and empowers children to express their thoughts clearly and rationally. This parenting style impacts the way students interact with teachers and school assignments because they are willing to challenge ideas and think critically. In comparison, working-class families typically employ the natural growth parenting style, where children “experience long stretches of leisure time, child-initiated play, clear boundaries between adults and children, and daily interactions with kin” (Lareau, 2003, p. 3). Thus, children are rarely questioning or challenging adults and simply accepting their orders. The difference in parenting styles puts students of working-class families at a disadvantage linguistically because they do not have as many interactions with adults outside of their household. Furthermore, students of working-class families are unfamiliar with an equal dynamic between adults and children, making the students less likely to assert their opinions or thoughts in a classroom. Therefore, if a student of a working-class family falls behind in class, they will be less likely to express their concerns or confusion as compared to a student of an upper-class family. This reproduces inequality in schools because students are not equipped with the communicative skills to advocate for themselves by articulating their needs.

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When exploited, capital and hunger are acting as dual insecurity among college students.

Explanation: Hunger insecurity often reproduced at the expense of low-income and deprived individuals- even those enrolled in higher education (Wood & Harris, 2017). These concerns are starting to be examined as food reproductions are studied and reflected in higher education. Empirical research continues to expand, contract, and divest stigmatic attachment of hunger insecurity

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1. Language and socioeconomic status of immigrants and English Language Learners intersect to shape unequal educational experiences, while acknowledging the importance of implementing a culturally sustaining curriculum to ensure all students receive a fair and equitable education (Jeong, 2021).

2. Explanation: This claim will help me demonstrate how one's race, linguistic background, and socioeconomic class can hinder access to an effective school curriculum and student skills because schools often perpetuate a hidden curriculum that privileges white, middle class norms while marginalizing the cultural knowledge, language, and experiences of students from racially, linguistically, and economically minoritized backgrounds. Students might be denied access to critical academic skills and literacies, thus reproducing the cycle of social and educational inequality. I will then discuss how culturally sustaining pedagogy helps students receive a fair and equitable education that values their linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

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Schooling acts as a force for the reproduction of social inequality by embedding racialized assumptions and structural disparities into everyday practices. In the context of STEM education, this is particularly evident in how schools distribute access to advanced coursework. Hagopian and Weinstein (2023) show that educators often rely on white, middle-class norms to determine which students are “ready” for honors and AP classes, reinforcing patterns of exclusion through biased recommendations and informal gatekeeping. Kalogrides and Loeb (2013) further reveal that Black and low-income students are disproportionately assigned to novice science and math teachers—those with less experience and often less content expertise—undermining the quality of instruction they receive and limiting opportunities for academic advancement. Finally, once placed in lower-level groups or courses, students often receive rote, compliance-focused instruction, while honors level or advanced courses emphasize sense-making, inquiry and critical thinking. As Anyon (1980) argued, such stratified instructional experiences constitute a hidden curriculum that prepares marginalized students for subordinate roles and reproduces racial and class hierarchies under the guise of academic merit.

Schools reproduce social inequality by determining student “worthiness” using white, middle-class norms, which results in Black and low-income students being placed in lower-level courses. These placements are compounded by assignment to less experienced teachers and access to rote, compliance-focused classroom experiences (Anyon, 1980; Hagopian and Weinstein, 2023; Kalogrides and Loeb, 2013). Together, these practices reinforce racial and class hierarchies and exemplify how schooling can serve as a system of social reproduction.

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During the first five years of No Child Left Behind Act’s implementation, 70% of predominantly Tribal / American Indian schools did not meet the legislation’s standards (Conn, 2013). Schooling acts as a force for reproducing the social inequality that consistently challenges Indigenous students. By ignoring the culture and knowledge of tribal communities, settler colonialism and social inequity continues impact the American education system.

Explanation: Current K-12, high-stakes standardized assessments are not culturally relevant and do not accurately depict the learning capabilities and potential of Indigenous students.

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While CRT has allowed for changes within education I assert that that CRT should be applied specifically to the discipline procedures of schools. Based on the research articles below it is apparent that while CRT has helped shape how students learn, there remains a significant chasm in how students are disciplined across racial lines (Anyon,. et. al, 2019)

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Starratt (1991) in his article asserted on how politics affects US education and considered the intersectionality between school restructuring and educational administrators role in promoting an ethical environment in their schools through the application of the foundational ethical themes namely, critique, justice and care; considered as the pillars on which to build such a school.

Explanation: The application of these ethical themes in effect will ensure US schools are free from political influence thereby promoting social equality irrespective of the location or district of US schools.

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1.  LatCrit (Latina/o Critical Theory) highlights the voices and experiences of Latinx students who have been historically excluded and marginalized.

2. Strangfeld (2024) illustrates how higher education plays a direct role in reproducing social inequality by framing Latinx first-generation college students as lacking when they do not align with dominant, white, middle-class ideas of success. When schools overlook students’ resistance capital and the knowledge latinx scholars bring from their communities, schools reinforce exclusionary rules that limit students’ access and opportunities.

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Resource pedagogies have the potential to interrupt education as a force for perpetuating social inequality by reaffirming the cultural identities of students of color, empowering them through the process of their learning, and fostering sociopolitical consciousness in order to challenge systemic injustices (Castro, 2022).

I will use this information to explore how resource pedagogies (CRP, CSP) can be a transformative force in education.

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Programs designed to uplift and encourage marginalized students can actually cause students to internalize and reproduce negative discourse due to the hegemonic practices that the programs were created from (Allen & Eisenhart, 2017).

Explanation: The hegemonic practices in schools influence even the inclusive programs designed to combat systemic injustice. Because many of these programs are have a foundation in deficit beliefs, the result is a form of unintended symbolic violence upon the very students the programs hope to support. By participating in these programs, these students can internalize deficit thinking and form identities grounded in whether they are a part of the "problem" or succeed in spite of it.

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Jaclyn Perlman

While traditional schooling often reproduces social inequality by reinforcing deficit-based assumptions about disabilities through the hidden curriculum, inclusive transition programs such as ClemsonLIFE and Career and CCS demonstrate that schooling can transform these inequalities by actively reshaping unspoken norms and expectations to affirm the value and potential of students with disabilities.

Reproduction of Inequality: The hidden curriculum in most K–12 settings teaches students with disabilities that they are separate, dependent, or less capable, which discourages college aspirations and reinforces marginalization (Bourdieu’s cultural capital/habitus).

Transformation of Inequality: Programs like ClemsonLIFE and CCS reframe the hidden curriculum by promoting independence, inclusion, and belonging—thus transforming the educational field to affirm diverse ways of learning and being.

o   “ClemsonLife has become one of the leading interdisciplinary research programs in postsecondary education for individuals with intellectual disabilities” (Clemson College of Education, n.d.)

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DisCrit and Disability Studies each contain transformative potential by encouraging school districts to create more accessible, and thereby inclusive, classroom environments by challenging implicit bias and inequalities against students with disabilities.

Explanation: The public school system has seen an increase in the number of students who require special education and related services. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, approximately 15% of all public school students were receiving special education services during the 2022-2023 school year. In that same year, the percentage of students in special education in New Jersey was higher than the national average at 18%. With the increased need for special education services, school districts face challenges in accommodating the individual needs of students, resulting in students who may face a lower quality of education compared to their able-bodied peers.

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Claim:
Classroom norms in science education often mirror and reinforce broader societal hierarchies, limiting participation for students from nondominant backgrounds and reinforcing unequal power structures (Mathis et al., 2023; Shultz et al., 2022).

Explanation:
This claim supports my argument by showing how even well-meaning science classrooms may unintentionally marginalize students whose linguistic and cultural practices differ from dominant norms. This aligns with MacLeod’s (2009) theory that schools socialize students into roles that reproduce existing social hierarchies. Rather than transforming inequality, science classrooms often reproduce it by privileging certain ways of speaking, reasoning, and knowing.

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Higher education institutions reproduce social inequalities requiring Latinx engineering transfer students to use their navigational capital to overcome systemic barriers (Denton & Borrego, 2021).

Description: How this puts marginalized students who transfer to a 4-year institution at a greater disadvantage without using their navigational capital instead of having resources provided by the university.

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Navigational capital is a form of cultural capital in which individuals develop skills that help them maneuver through institutions (Yosso, 2005).

Explanation: As Khan explains, "St. Paul's symbolic rites of initiation-from learning to eat to the first night service to the taking one's seat service a few days later-make 'new' students" (2021, p. 93). Private schools have a hidden curriculum of rituals, rites, and traditions that make the navigational capital of certain students - legacies, socioeconomic elites, domestic students - a privilege that generates a sense of belonging and ease that other students cannot access.

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Evidence-Based Claim: Truly transformative educational practices get pushed aside so that hegemonic structures can flourish (Jay, 2003).

Explanation: The hidden curriculum is arbitrarily implemented in order for the ruling bloc to maintain social dominance. The ruling bloc in this context is the white, high-class elitists at the top of American capitalist society. An example of this process is in Martina Eileen Espinosa's empirical study on fourth grade history textbooks with Eurocentric themes. These textbooks “include partial lessons or spotlights on various minority groups [...], they are based on the foundation of a Eurocentric curriculum” (Espinosa, 2004, p. 38). This “[results] in an educational community that gets to pat its collective back for its multicultural efforts and for fostering an appearance of broad consensus (another manifestation of hegemony) for maintaining a place of prominence for multicultural education in the schools as an important goal” (Jay, 2003, p. 6).

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Students in schools serving working-class communities were taught to follow procedures, obey rules, and complete fragmented tasks with little explanation. These skills were designed to prepare them for what they were expected to become: workers in low-autonomy labor(Anyon, 1980).

explanation: This sentence illustrates how schooling contributes to social inequality by channeling students from different social classes into schools that are “designed” to prepare them for predetermined roles. However, with advances in technology, the rise of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) has made it possible for students from various schools to access the same educational resources. I will use this point to argue that contemporary schooling has the potential to promote greater educational equality.

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Education as it exists today acts as a driver for social inequality. Bourdieu explains that several forms of social capital perpetuate the hierarchies that exist in culture and society. Part of this, is the ways in which those with access and resources leverage these privileges to maximize educational benefits. Even though this is rebuked by other scholars such as Yosso, school systems still operate in ways explained by Bourdieu and do not yet see the value in theories such as cultural capital.

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Schooling acts as a powerful force in the reproduction of social inequality by legitimizing dominant white, middle-class cultural norms while systematically devaluing the cultural capital of marginalized students; this process occurs not only through structural mechanisms such as curriculum and tracking (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Roscigno, 1999)

Explanation

1.) Bowles and Gintis emphasize that inequality is not accidental; schools are structured to maintain the class order under the appearance of neutrality.

2.) Rescigno links micro-level institutional practices to broader structural inequality, aligning with both Carter’s insights on cultural misrecognition and Bowles & Gintis’ class-based framework.

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With social capital, proper norms function as essential factors for educational achievement (Coleman, 1988).

Explanation: Communities with strong educational norms are able to positively develop both the aspirations and the behaviors of African American youth. Conversely, the absence of education as a priority in community norms leads to increased educational disparities, lower retention and educational completion rates.

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Chaz Freeman                                                                       

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Chaz Freeman                                                                       

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Validation at white institutions like Academic universities is often sought, but not fully realized for African American students due to hegemonic structures that fail to embrace them culturally. Consequently, this negatively impacts retention rates. (Holmes et al, n.d.)

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When students enter classrooms, they are culturally diverse. Any classroom that negates the value of these cultural values, negates an aspect of the student academically and is virtually asking students to assimilate rather than add their experience to the learning environment.

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Morgan                                                                               When applied to the classroom practice, humanizing pedagogy offers educators concrete ways to affirm student identities, center their lived experiences, and challenge the deficit narrative that upholds inequality in schools (Salazar, 2013). 

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Morgan                                                                               When applied to the classroom practice, humanizing pedagogy offers educators concrete ways to affirm student identities, center their lived experiences, and challenge the deficit narrative that upholds inequality in schools (Salazar, 2013). 

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Historically, math education in the U.S. has reinforced social inequality by upholding a “banking model” of instruction that privileges speed, correctness, and compliance over deep thinking, exploration, and identity. This approach contributes to a belief system—or doxa—that only certain students are “math people,” which marginalizes those whose ways of thinking and being do not align with dominant norms. However, when educators implement a humanizing pedagogy in math classrooms—centering student voice, affirming cultural identity, and fostering relational trust—students can begin to see themselves as capable, creative thinkers.

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Artificial Intelligence tools could aggravate inequalities within education based on cultural and technological capital gaps between students of different socioeconomic backgrounds (Hadar, 2025).

Explanation: Schools could continue to promote upper socioeconomic cultural values when implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in the classroom. Teachers might assume all students will use the AI tools in the same way to further their learning. However, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds could be at a disadvantage based on their cultural capital and parental guidance with engagement of AI tools.

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Social Reproduction Theory, developed by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron (DiMaggio,1979). This theory helps us understand how educational institutions contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities, rather than eliminating them

One educational issue that interests me is the marginalization of Asian immigrant teachers in U.S. public schools.

Using Hsieh and Kim’s (2020) and Kim and Hsieh’s (2022) findings, I make the following evidence-based claim: schooling functions as a force of social reproduction by maintaining racial hierarchies that marginalize Asian immigrant teachers and diminish their contributions to school culture and equity efforts. This reproduces inequality not only for students but also for teachers whose voices and experiences are crucial for truly inclusive schooling.

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Community cultural wealth (CCW) emphasizes the valuable cultural assets people of color have such as family support, resilience, and community networks, that help them succeed and resist systemic barriers and oppression in education (Yosso, 2005).

Explanation: I am focusing on first-gen students. First-generation students of color have an array of knowledge that they bring with them into their college experience that aids in their ability to navigate dominant culture deeply engrained in the educational system.

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Generative AI writing tools have the potential to transform educational outcomes by expanding students’ access to social capital, democratizing feedback and support, and challenging the dominant norms that reproduce writing-based inequities in K-12 classrooms (Stornaiuolo et al., 2023).

Explanation: Writing instruction often highlights the disparities in writing and literacy pedagogies as well as the differences in social capital that students bring to the classroom. AI has the ability, when used ethically, to act as a mentor providing guidance through the writing process.

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Indigenous and non-English languages are devalued in America (Anzaldúa, 1987).

Explanation: Multilingual students are not accepted as Americans because they do not know English or do not speak it well. Multilingual students negotiate between losing their native language and assimilating.

Theory planning to use: Latina and Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit)

Theorists: Yosso, Valdes, Anzaldúa

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Educators' deficit-based assumptions about Black students’ behaviors and abilities, shaped by racialized and ableist perceptions, contribute significantly to the disproportionate placement of these students in special education (Collins, 2024).

This claim supports my argument that schooling often functions as a mechanism for the reproduction of inequality, particularly through special education systems. Drawing on DisCrit (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013), I will use this point to highlight how racism and ableism operate together to marginalize Black students. By showing how educator perceptions and institutional practices pathologize Black students, I will argue that special education placements are not neutral but reflect systemic biases. This reinforces existing hierarchies rather than transforming them.

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As Yosso (2005) mentioned, the whole society could not help the people in poverty because the rich even dominated the cultural capital. 

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As Yosso (2005) mentioned, the whole society could not help the people in poverty because the rich even dominated the cultural capital. 

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It helps because Yosso (2005) explained that there might not be enough cultural capital for the people in poverty, because the cultural capital was dominated by the rich, and the rich did not know how to create the cultural capital for the poor. In addtion, they might not know how to create the culture capital.

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Transformative pedagogies, such as feminist pedagogy or engaged pedagogy, are in conflict with the inherent hierarchical structure of the higher education university system (Burke et al., 2016; Miller & Morrison, 2025).

Explanation: The American university system, developed during the colonial and slave eras, inherently favors and prioritizes masculine, hierarchical structures and ways of knowing. The implementation of transformative pedagogies attempts to disrupt this relationship, but is in conflict with the structure itself, and therefore challenging.

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Cultural capital which includes linguistic ability, cultural knowledge, and educational background can be transformed into social and economic capital when it reflects the values of the dominant culture, reinforcing educational inequality (Levinson, 2011).

Explanation: Without proper training, teachers may unintentionally contribute to the social reproduction of inequality by favoring students whose cultural capital aligns with dominant norms. If preservice teacher education does not prepare educators to recognize and value diverse forms of cultural capital, teachers may misinterpret students’ abilities, limit their opportunities for success, and reinforce existing disparities.

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Culturally responsive teacher–student relationships foster emotional well-being and academic flourishing among students with fewer internal resources, helping mitigate disparities in achievement (Chamizo-Nieto et al., 2021) and aligning with Paris’s (2012) call for schooling practices that sustain students’ identities and support educational justice.

Explanation:

By sustaining students’ cultural and emotional needs through responsive relationships, schools can disrupt the reproduction of inequality and instead act as transformative spaces that promote belonging and equitable academic outcomes (Paris, 2012).