by Randy Clemens
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandated a study of educational opportunity among students. In 1966 James Coleman presented the Equality of Educational Opportunity Study. Known as the Coleman Report, the findings were and are striking. They led to a shift of focus from inputs to outputs, from money spent to scores attained.
I’ve heard some describe the findings of the report as more money does not equal higher achievement. That’s true, but incomplete. The findings illustrate that variables such as per pupil spending and teacher to student ratio have little effect in comparison to socio-economic status.
Yesterday President Obama announced ‘turnaround’ grants for underperforming schools in order to improve the percentage of students who graduate. Schools in each qualified state will compete for funds based on proposals that demonstrate their willingness to change. Some options include removing the principal and a portion of the staff, restructuring governance, and changing instructional programs.
Within the past year, our administration has introduced two new competitive grant programs for considerable sums of money–$4.35 billion for Race to the Top and $900 million for the newest grant. Reform is important and necessary. A disproportionate number of African American and Hispanic students do not graduate, do not go to college, do not lead happy lives. Spending money to fund a new reading program, unfortunately, will not initiate systemic, sustainable change. Replacing leadership, teachers, or governance structures probably won’t help much either. We may see bumps in achievement, but they will fade.
Public education is not doomed. For widespread, lasting change, however, our administration must consider a broader array of social reform programs. Money is important, but we need to fund the right things. The Coleman Report reminds us of the influence of a spectrum of factors including access to healthcare, stable housing, and early and adult education. The Great Society, which led to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is the source of both praise and criticism. The intent was good and ambitious. The results were uneven and sometimes uninspiring. Perhaps it’s time we begin to speak of a new generation of progressive initiatives, a chorus of reforms to improve schools and communities together.
The Coleman Report showed that two variables made a major difference for Black students when it came to academic achievement..These variables were socio-economic status and a construct which Coleman labeled as a”Sense of Control of the Environment”..The teacher effect also made a difference, but it was very slight, ‘ teacher effect’ meaning teachers’ training, education and experience..Socio-economic status was predicated on school’s outcome because, Black students who scored high on these variables tend to have acquired more of the class values which the schools are based on including, language, culture and interests..Although they displayed features of the cumulative deficit, their school outcome-measures were significantly higher than those of Black students in a lower socio-economic class..Considering the schools as a cultural entity, the closer the students are to the culture of the schools, the greater their outcome score will be..
Of all the variables measured in the Coleman Report, including all measures of family background, all measures of school and academic performance, the one variable that showed the greatest relationship to school achievement, was the sense of control of the environment construct..The Coleman Report divides this control of the environment in the following manner: Achievement, or lack of achievement of children from disadvantaged groups appears closely related to what they believe about their environment, whether they believe the environment will respond to reasonable effort or whether they believe the environment is essentially merely random or immovable…Children from disadvantaged groups assume that” nothing they do can affect the environment”..
Sense of the control of the environment appears to be related to the cultural context of the environment…Black students who had a strong sense of control of their school environment scored higher than White students with a weak sense of control of the environment…It is the author’s opinion that the finding that the sense of control of the environment had the highest correlation to academic achievement for Black students was the most significant finding to come out of the Coleman Report..Unfortunately, both Coleman and social scientists at that time missed the importance of the construct..They failed to understand, or attempt to understand, what the sense of control of the environment was measuring, why the sense of control of the environment correlated so highly with Black academic achievement..They failed to asked the question, if sense of control of the environment correlates highly with academic achievement, then how can we boost the sense of control of the environment in the schools of Black students and in the programmatic features of the schools for Black students?
Instead of taking an in-depth look at the sense of control of the environment, social scientists chose to ignore it..They interpreted the data from the Coleman Report in the following manner: If there were no significant correlations for Black students in the traditional measures-class size, per pupil expenditures and teacher training, then the predictors of academic achievement must be in the Black family..In 1969, a group of Harvard scholars, having difficulty accepting the conclusion of the Coleman Report, re-examined the data..After three years of extensive study and analysis, they published their findings in a book on equality of educational opportunities..Their primary conclusions remained the same as the Coleman Report..They reported that the data failed to indicate a significant relationship between teacher-pupil rates, per pupil expenditures and academic achievement..
Like the Coleman Report, they reported that the data showed the existence of the cumulative deficit on a national basis..They concluded that the relative standings of Black students in relation to White students remained essentially consistent in terms of standard deviation..But the absolute difference in terms of grade level discrepancies increased overtime..The longer these students remained in school, the farther behind they slipped..”Between the Rhetoric and Reality” Lauriat Press,2009;Simpkins&Simpkins;pp-26-27:Amazon.com…