Society of Professors of Education Gives 2014 Book Award to AIR Author Peter Cookson’s Work on High School Inequality

Washington, D.C. – The book Class Rules: Exposing Inequality in American High Schools by Dr. Peter Cookson of the American Institutes for Research (AIR) has won the 2014 book award of the Society of Professors of Education for addressing the issues facing the discipline and vocation of education.

In the book Cookson, who directs the Equity Project at AIR, compares the cultures and curricula of five high schools that have contrasting social class compositions: an elite boarding school and public schools in a wealthy suburb, a middle-class neighborhood, a working-class rural community, and a low-income urban community. He describes how the structure, rites of passage, and class consciousness in each school reproduce social class inequality.

The award will be presented Saturday, April 5, 2014 during the Annual Meeting of the Society of Professors of Education in Philadelphia.

About AIR
Established in 1946, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., the American Institutes for Research (AIR) is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization that conducts behavioral and social science research and delivers technical assistance both domestically and internationally in the areas of health, education, and workforce productivity. For more information, visit www.air.org.

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