Coleman Report

The Equality of Educational Opportunity (EEO) report, known as “the Coleman report” after principal investigator James S. Coleman, is widely seen as one of the most significant contributions of the 20th century to education policy and research as well as the field of sociology. The national study, commissioned by Congress under a provision in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, documented school inequality on an unprecedented scale. Attempting to survey every principal, student, and teacher in a nationally representative sample of 4,000 schools, the EEO represented a historic data collection effort in American education. The project collected cross-sectional survey and test score data from approximately 600,000 students and 50,000 teachers. This entry further discusses how the researchers conducted the study and their findings. It then looks at critiques of the study and at research that reexamined its findings.

The report sought to assess the quality of educational opportunities available to racial and ethnic student subgroups across the nation. In defining school quality, Coleman and his colleagues measured school resources such as the number of textbooks and laboratories available, curricular offerings, and academic practices such as tracking systems. Authors also took into account student and teacher characteristics. Student characteristics included measures of socioeconomic status, parent education, and peer attitudes and aspirations, while teachers were evaluated on their education, experience, salary, attitudes, and aptitude.

Student achievement measures were constructed using scores on standardized tests of pupils’ verbal and nonverbal skills at the end of Grades 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 as well as results of more traditional achievement tests in reading and mathematics at Grades 3, 6, 9, and 12 and tests of students’ command of science, social studies, and other general information administered at Grades 9 and 12.

Coleman and colleagues demonstrated that American public schools remained highly racially segregated 12 years after Brown v. Board of Education. Further, they documented large racial achievement inequalities among U.S. public school students. The Coleman study found that the Black–White test score gap among first graders was equivalent to approximately one grade level. By the time students reached 12th grade, this achievement gap had widened to 3.5 grade levels. However, after accounting for regional differences in educational resources, Coleman showed that racial gaps in school resources were relatively small. Further, and perhaps most notably, the Coleman report cast new doubts on the extent to which schools contribute to educational inequality, showing that within-school variation in achievement was larger than between-school variation. In short, students’ achievement was impacted far more by their out-of-school experiences than the instructional practices and policies of their schools.

The Coleman study found that family background played a large role in student achievement while school practices such as per pupil expenditures and teacher quality had little effect. Summarizing these findings, the report goes on to say: