School Desegregation: A Political Scientist's View

Extract

Perhaps the most arresting conclusion in the summary of the Coleman Report is the statement: “a pupil's achievement is strongly related to the educational backgrounds and aspirations of the other students in the school” (p. 22). The point is stated more forcefully later, in the body of the Report: “Attributes of other students account for far more variation in the achievement of minority group children than do any attributes of school facilities and slightly more than do attributes of staff” (p. 302). I always thought so. I like this finding because it coincides with my own views about social democracy and the schools. This was forcefully expressed in 1950 by Chief Justice Vinson, when the Supreme Court ruled racial isolation of a single Negro in the Texas Law School constitutionally unequal on grounds that fellowship and extracurricular association with other students were as essential to legal education as were equivalent teachers, books, and lessons. Now in the Coleman Report there is persuasiveness in documentation and analysis for this view which is more convincing than personal or judicial opinion. This is one of several points I have selected for comment from a series of recent social science reports on race as a factor in national school policy. In looking directly at only a few points one can merely pause to salute the energy, daring, intelligence, and skill of the social scientists who have prepared these stimulating, impressive, and important documents.