Coleman Report

Equality of Educational Opportunity, the 1966 survey Congress commissioned under the Civil Rights Act and James Coleman led, covered hundreds of thousands of pupils and was expected to document unequal school funding. Its central finding was that spending, facilities and curriculum explained little of the variation in achievement once family background was accounted for, and that the social make-up of a pupil's classmates mattered more.

In practice

• A district spends a bond issue on new buildings and is surprised when results in the new schools track the old ones.
• Two siblings at different schools end up with grades much closer to each other than to their classmates'.

Possible explanations

One explanation is that the resources the survey measured, such as buildings and spending, are weak proxies for what schools actually do. Another is that family background supplies the preparation, expectation and support that schooling builds on.

In its favour

It was an unusually large survey for its time, its central finding has been reproduced in later work on the limits of pure resource measures, and it redirected education research towards what happens in classrooms.

Against it

Later work found teachers differ greatly in effectiveness, which its measures could not capture, so the conclusion that schools matter little goes beyond what the data showed.

Standing

Later work found that teachers differ greatly in effectiveness, which the report's measures of resources did not capture, so schools matter more than its headline suggests. Compare social capital, Coleman's later concept.

Subject

Learning & Education

Essay

What works in learning, and what schools can and cannot change