Challenging to Disparities in Secondary Education: Re-examination of Studies and Educational Reforms Concerning Disparities in High Schools in Japan.

In Japan, disparities in high schools showed an increasing tendency until the end of the 1970s. Since that time, attempts have been made to analyze and reduce these disparities, both in the field of sociology of education and educational reforms. This paper aims to re-examine the challenges in both fields and to elucidate their positive outcomes and limitations, and in addition, to point out a new perspective for future challenges in this area. Academically, the study of disparities began with the application of the concept of "tracking." At the beginning, many types of evils caused by disparities were problematized, and the concept of "tracking" was adopted to document the situation. The concept of "tracking" was compatible with functionalism, which was the main theoretical stream in the sociology of education at that time. The concept of "tracking" was originally used in studies of high schools in the United States to reveal the fact that there were invisible mechanisms for the selection of students in open curriculum systems. However, in Japan, the concept was used to report the fact that there were great differences in the inner processes of schools and subjective aspects of students based on school disparities. In other words, the concept was used to point out the effects of the disparities. As a result, the study of disparities has been developed as the study of "tracking effects." It can be said that studies of the tracking effect could have contributed to investigations of the inner processes of schools and subjective aspects of students. But instead, they took a macro perspective from the studies of school disparities. As a result, disparities were not examined in relation to social structures. Politically, there are two ways to reduce disparities in schools. One is to control the level of achievement of new students in order to prevent the emergence of differences among schools (input control). The other is to control educational activities in the schools to ensure that tracking effects do not take place in each school (through put control). Since the late 1970s, input controls have been carried out through reforms of the entrance examination system of high schools and improvements of the guidance system of junior high schools. However, these controls were too indirect to reduce school disparities. In other words, whether they could reduce the disparities or not depended on their ability to change students' standards for school choice, which were indeed subjective. Through put controls have been carried out as reforms of high schools. High school reforms after the 1980s were generally seen as an attempt to weaken classifications and frames of education. Logically, it seemed that these efforts led to a limitation of tracking effects in each school and to a reduction in school disparities as a whole. However, these attempts were not effective as they lacked a grand design and were done separately for each school. Challenges to the school disparities in both fields mentioned above seems to be homologous. They share the fact that they look at the disparities from a narrow perspective, only in relation to inner processes of each school or the subjective aspect of students. School disparities are social disparities. For example, they involve class differences among the enrolled students, and are related to regional differences. Consequently, in order to reduce school disparities, it is necessary to see them in their social context. The conclusion of this paper, by introducing recent challenges to school disparities, proposes this new perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]