![]() ![]() Even racial integration had relatively little impact on student achievement, as measured by standardized tests. Moreover, the differences they did recognize had little effect on black and white performance. ![]() Popular impressions to the contrary, Coleman’s investigators found little difference between physical facilities and curricula at black and white schools. When the results were in from this, the second-largest social science research project in history, they produced conclusions sharply at variance with the reigning doctrine. You know yourself that the difference is going to be striking.” So Coleman and most of the academic establishment were startled and dismayed eight months later by just how little difference his survey detected. So powerful was the presumption that when Congress in 1964 ordered a survey on “the lack of availability of equal educational opportunity for individuals by reason of race, color, religion or national origin,” James Coleman, the study’s director, could tell an interviewer even before the field work was done: “… the study will show the difference in the quality of schools that the average Negro child and the average white child are exposed to. “As the social sciences became increasingly central to the formulation of public policy, this doctrine reinforced the political and legal drive for school desegregation. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |