New Educational Review Piece Criticizes Coleman's Positions

An article in the issue of the Harvard Educational Review that goes on sale today says that school desegregation is not self-defeating, thus challenging the conclusions reached by James S. Coleman, professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago.

The article, by Thomas F. Pettigrew '55, professor of Social Psychology and Sociology, and Robert L. Green of Michigan State University, challenges Coleman both on his research methodology and on his alleged overuse of the mass media to influence public policy.

Last April, Coleman delivered a paper to the American Educational Research Association that tied an increase in "white flight" from the nation's central cities to greater racial desegregation in those cities' schools.

Coleman was also the principal author of a 1966 study which found that black and lower class students performed better in school when integrated with whites and students from higher economic backgrounds. The study has been used as an intellectual foundation for school busing programs.

What many observers saw as a reversal in Coleman's position received extensive media attention and the new findings were seized upon by anti-busing groups as support for their stand.

The Pettigrew and Green article criticizes coleman and the news media for alleged confusing research data and political biases. They say Coleman, who in October testified before Congress in favor of a proposed anti-busing amendment to the Constitution, has taken political positions without making clear that his personal views were not fully supported by his research data.

The article says Coleman's work has emphasized the experiences of smaller cities and that his data is contradicted by research by others into "white flight" from larger urban school districts.

Some larger cities studied by other experts showed increases of up to 39.2 per cent in white enrollment from 1968-72, even during extensive school desegregation programs, the article says.

Pettigrew also says Coleman based his conclusions on racial trends only since 1968, after large-scale desegregation plans had gone into effect in the cities studied.

According to the article, Coleman has backed down from his earlier insistence that "white flight" is directly caused by school desegregation. He presented a paper to the United States Commission on Civil Rights that stated that "it is not clear ...whether desegregation itself induces an increased movement of whites from the desegregated district."

Pettigrew and Green say that both their and Coleman's data show the efficacy of metropolitan area school integration, that "metropolitan approaches are essential if desegregation is to be attained."

"Unless he is opposed to racial desegregation as a goal--and he has insisted in many interviews that this is not the case--we cannot reconcile his political position with his own data on urban school desegregation trends," the article says.

The authors say that Coleman's public opposition to school desegregation is only "tenuously" related to his research findings.

Pettigrew is in Santa Monica, California and could not be reached for comment.