Cool, will check it out. And how unanimous are these views amongst sociologists? I'd imagine there is disagreement on the subject?
As far as I know there isn't much disagreement about the fact that school funding doesn't correlate well with outcomes, but there is obviously a lot of disagreement about how to translate this into actual reforms.
In terms of assessing the validity of the original research though, I get the feeling that in this case the answers you get are much more determined by the questions you're asking rather than by the methodology of the studies. Unlike, say, when you are trying to understand how the results of surveys on self-reported drug use correlate with actual drug use, and you need to read a 594 page PDF worth of research before you're able to say anything intelligent.[1] (Which I read last night for fun, which is why I know this.)
[1] http://archives.drugabuse.gov/pdf/monographs/Monograph167/Mo...