"Lucas provides one of the most compelling descriptions of tracking of any researcher writing today….this book will change the way that sociologists, and ultimately educators and parents, view the new forms of tracking."

–James E. Rosenbaum, Northwestern University

"This book presents a challenge to educational research to understand why detracking in American high schools did not have the effect many would have expected."

–Alan Kerckhoff, Duke University

"For those interested in educational tracking, educational stratification, or structural constraints on the student career, Tracking Inequality is ‘must reading.’"

–Karl Alexander, Johns Hopkins University

What has happened since formal tracking was dismantled in U.S. high schools? In this provocative book, Samuel 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.

American Sociological Association's William Waller Award Winner—2000