Crash Course Sociology #41: Schools & Social Inequality Worksheet

Explain how meritocracy is supposed to work and identify specific ways SAT scores and grades fall short as pure measures of merit

Trace how local property-tax school funding connects neighborhood wealth to school quality and, ultimately, college attendance

Explain cultural capital and how it can create educational disparities separate from school funding

Describe how tracking and school discipline disparities disproportionately affect students by race and gender, including the school-to-prison pipeline

Have students watch the linked Crash Course episode before assigning the worksheet, since every question is written to be answered directly from the video's content rather than from background knowledge alone

Use the editable Word version if you want students to type answers directly into the document for Google Classroom or another LMS, and the PDF version for printing

Pair questions 9-15 (gifted-program nominations, discipline disparities, tracking, and the school-to-prison pipeline) as a discussion cluster, since the answer key's own statistics for these questions build on each other

Video-based note-taking and comprehension — all 15 questions require information stated directly in the linked Crash Course episode.

Sociological concept application — students define and apply terms like meritocracy, cultural capital, and tracking to real school-system examples.

Interpreting statistical claims — several answers cite specific figures (a 10% funding increase linked to 7% higher earnings; suspension rates three times higher for Black students), which the worksheet has students identify and explain.