Background: This investigation was sparked by research findings on secondary education showing school segregation to be closely associated with homogeneous grouping practices, such as tracking and between-class ability grouping. Research Design: We conduct secondary analyses of national data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten…

Background/Context: The Equality of Educational Opportunity study is widely recognized as one of the most important studies on schooling ever performed. The findings from the report have shaped the field of education, national education policies, and wider public and scholarly opinion regarding the contributions of schools and schooling to…

Background/Context: Although there has been progress in closing the test score gaps among student groups over past decades, that progress has stalled. Many researchers have speculated why the test score gaps closed between the early 1970s and the early 1990s, but only a few have been able to empirically study how changes in school factors and…

Background/Context: In most judicial and social science debates about school desegregation, it is usually assumed that educational and social benefits, if significant, help establish a compelling purpose for school desegregation plans. Less thought has been given to whether the degree of benefits should factor into whether a plan is narrowly…

Background/Context: Even though not fully realized, in legislation and theory, the requirements of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act and the No Child Left Behind Act have created pressure to address the historical inequity in educational opportunity, achievement, and outcomes, as well as disparities in achievement between…

Background:This study grew out of a recent Supreme Court case known as "Horne v Flores." The case began in 1992 in Nogales, Arizona when a 4th grade English learner (EL), Miriam Flores, sued the district and the state for failing to provide her (and other EL students) with an appropriate education as guaranteed by the Equal Educational…

Background/Context: The United States is becoming increasingly racially and ethnically diverse, and increasingly racially isolated across race-ethnic boundaries. Researchers have argued that both diversity and racial isolation serve to undermine the social cohesion needed to bind American citizens to one another and to society at large. Focus of…

Background/Context: Perpetuation theory predicts that attending a racially segregated school paves the way for a lifetime of segregated experiences in neighborhoods, schools, and jobs. Research conducted in the 1970s and 1980s linked racial isolation in high schools with later racial isolation in many social settings among African-American…

This article addresses the stubborn and persistent underrepresentation of African American and Chicano-Latino in California higher education by examining the academic resources, performance, and postsecondary outcomes of students from public high schools with different racial compositions. The results from this study provide evidence for the…

Drawing on memoranda and other materials in the federal archives, and interviews with more than a score of officials in the Johnson and Nixon administrations, this essay attempts to trace the development of the policy impact of the Coleman Report from its origins in 1964 to the end of Nixon's first term. (Author)

The Coleman report, published 12 years after the Brown decision, confirmed that widespread school segregation in the United States created inequality of educational opportunity. This study examines whether racial and socioeconomic segregation, which is on the rise in the United States, is still contributing to the achievement differences among…