Reproduction theories reveal schools' critical role in inequalities and instil a sense of pessimism regarding schools' potential to create a fair society. School effectiveness research (SER) has responded to this pessimism by studying associations between school factors and educational performance to show that schools can make a difference. Despite its optimistic approach, SER fails to analyse the effects of broader social structures on educational processes. This article uses the institutional habitus concept to understand how the Turkish state's assimilative educational agenda and Kurdish communities' past experiences inform educational interactions in a public middle school in Istanbul's inner-city area. The paper argues that institutional habitus provides a more robust framework than SER in explaining schools' role in academic achievement within the broader sociopolitical context.