When the parents of school age children have significant relationships with their children's schoolmates, a particularly strong school-community relationship forms. Public schools in the United States are best organized to serve such functional, neighborhood communities, which are rapidly disappearing. School reorganization might renew community…

This presentation by James S. Coleman examines several questions: Does desegregation bring about loss of whites from schools in a desegregated system? If so, what is the extent of that loss? And what are the conditions, in the demography and ecology of the system, as well as in the form of the desegregation policy, which affect the extent of that…

This policy paper addresses policymakers' concerns about parents' dwindling role in their children's lives and the resulting burden that has been placed on schools. A historical perspective of the roles of families and schools is provided. First, the man's employment in a job outside the home as households left the farm, and then the mother's…