Why Have Sociologists, at Times, Been Critical of Jonathan Kozol's

question 8

Multiple Choice

Why have sociologists, at times, been critical of Jonathan Kozol's findings on public schools in his work Savage Inequalities?

• A) Schools are not integral to the functioning of society and are, therefore, not worthy of empirical study.
• B) Young students cannot be trusted as respondents for sociological studies.
• C) Poor students are likely to lie about their educational experiences to fit into normative constructions of what it means to be educated.
• D) He had no systematic way in which he chose the schools he studied, which allowed for selection bias.

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Definitions:

Test-retest Reliability

The consistency of a test's results when the same individuals take the same test again after a period of time, measuring its stability over time.

Z score

A numerical metric that represents how a specific value's deviation relates to the average of a dataset, quantified by the number of standard deviations away from that average.

Normal Curve

A bell-shaped curve, also known as a Gaussian distribution, representing the spread of a variable in a way that most values cluster around the mean.

Standard Deviation

A statistic that measures the dispersion or variability of a dataset relative to its mean, indicating how spread out the data points are.