Learning from the Coleman Report

[IanC]

Second, the Coleman Report suggested that there was a threshold or "tipping point" at which the negative effects of peer poverty become much greater. Numbers matter, in part because the numerical majority in a school sets the tone. As Coleman explained, "Cultural dominance of middle-class norms prevail in middle-class schools with a teacher teaching toward those standards and with students striving to maintain those standards. Conversely, in a predominantly lower-class school, standards prevail that are oftentimes antischool and that are oriented toward lack of performance or low performance in school." He estimated that the threshold was around 60 percent middle class; that is, middle-class achievement would not decline in a 40 percent low-income school, but might at 50 percent and surely would at 90 percent.

But if having middle-class peers is a positive influence on low-income children, might not the reverse also be true? Wouldn't middle-class children be harmed by association with low-income children? Coleman claimed not: "The results indicate that heterogeneity of race and heterogeneity of family educational background can increase the achievement of children from weak educational backgrounds with no adverse effect on children from strong educational backgrounds." How could this be the case? First, the Coleman Report found that low-income children were more affected by student environment than middle-class children. Integration was "asymmetric in its effects," having "its greatest effect on those from educationally deficient backgrounds." Blacks, for example, were twice as affected by school social environment as whites. Coleman explained that in middle-class families, aspirations and achievement were more firmly rooted because there was a greater likelihood of adult supervision; by contrast, in single-parent households, more time was spent with peers. Likewise, Coleman found, because middle-class children were, on average, learning a lot at home, the additional gains from peers and teachers were comparatively smaller than for lower-income children. The finding of differential sensitivity, wrote E.D. Hirsch, "may be denominated 'Coleman's Law,'" and it has been replicated in several subsequent studies.

Consider the issue of discipline. Coleman noted that "disorder clearly comes from lower-class schools." In a school in which "70 or 80 percent of the children are undisciplined in their ordinary behavior pattern, then the values of the classroom are going to be undisciplined." By contrast, the theory is that in predominantly middle-class schools, "children who themselves may be undisciplined, coming into classrooms that are highly disciplined, would take on the characteristics of their classmates and be governed by the norms of the classroom." School discipline, he concluded, is "very much a function of the proportion of lower-class pupils in the classroom."

Coleman's research on this question has been ratified by numerous studies of racial desegregation. Even the most vocal opponents of busing agree that white scores did not decline with integration. David Armor, for example, noted in 1995 that "virtually all studies of desegregation and achievement have found little or no change in achievement or other educational outcomes for white students."

Learning from James Coleman - page 3 | Public Interest


White parents have been more or less willing to spend money on educating the underclass (of all races) but much less willing to allow their children to be used as the means to bring the underclass up to the middle class. is this fair or unfair, reasonable or unreasonable? why should middleclass parents parent-by-proxy those children that are not being taken care of by their own families? should we expect middle class families to expose there children to undesirable conditions for the sake of others or should they strive to give them the best possible start to life? as in all areas of life, equal opportunity will not result in equal outcomes.

 

[IanC]

still no comments on whether it is reasonable to expect middleclass parents to expose their children to underclass attitudes and behaviours? why should functional families be expected to care for children of dysfunctional families to the same extent as their own?

how could underclass children be given middle class values without removing them from their familial backgrounds?