Social Science and the Struggle Over School Integration: Tracing the Origins of the Coleman Report

• In Event: 31.093 - Sheraton Roundtable Three - Osgoode Ballroom
  In Roundtable Session: 31.093-2 - Interdisciplinary Approaches to History of Education

Abstract

Equality of Educational Opportunity, a 1966 federal government research report better known as the Coleman Report, had a lasting influence on educational policy and research. Widely credited with ushering in a new paradigm for studying educational inequality, the report was controversial upon its release, inciting harsh rebuke or disinterest from several leading black activists. Focusing on Chicago’s schools as a site for research and federal government intervention, this paper investigates the political and scientific developments that shaped the Coleman Report and account for its striking success. Subsequent court rulings and policy decisions on school integration regularly cited this new expert analysis, and I argue that this expert framing systematically excluded popular black concerns from a narrowly framed liberal integration agenda.

Author

• Fithawee Tzeggai, University of California - Berkeley