Book Review: The Long Crusade: Profiles in Education Reform, 1967-2014

Abstract

The Long Crusade: Profiles in Education Reform, 1967-2014 Raymond Wolters Washington Summit Publishers 2015, 612 pagesIn this well-written and carefully referenced book, University of Delaware historian Raymond Wolters takes us on a fascinating historical journey through the increasingly desperate attempts of American education reformers to explain the black-white gap in educational achievement and find ways to close it. In order to do this, he adopts the original approach of presenting detailed biographies of America's main twentieth century educationalists and analyses of their views. These allow us to understand how their viewpoints developed.Wolters tells us at the outset that at the time that USA schools were legally desegregated -following the landmark 1954 case in Topeka, Kansas, Brown v. the Board of Education - the average black student's test scores were 85% of the average student's test scores. Wolters documents all the failed attempts to do something about this, all of them predicated on the 'Doctrine of Zero Group Differences' and thus the assumption that whatever the cause of the achievement gap it must be remediable. The gap has to be a product of environmental factors because the alternative is simply unthinkable. Along the way, we meet a series of interesting, if naive, academics who have tried to solve the problem, wading into a minefield along the way.Much of the background and early crusade is given to us through the biography of the pro-integration educationalist Jonathan Kozol. Wolters explains that the desegregation of schools had meant only that there should be no racial discrimination in selecting the student. This was instituted and, as a consequence, most children attended their local school. However, because neighborhoods tended to be racially segregated, this meant that by the 1960s, schools were overwhelmingly racially homogeneous. And the black-white difference in school achievement remained robust. It was assumed this was because black schools had worse facilities and worse teachers.In 1966, Johns Hopkins University sociologist James Coleman conducted an extensive report into the racial disparity in education. He found that 80% of pupils were in schools that were at least 90% while 65% of black pupils were in schools that were at least 90% black. He also found that the facilities and teacher standards at black and schools were pretty much the same. Finding that the black-white achievement gap had not changed, he needed to find an environmental explanation and after poring over the statistics he found that blacks who attended majority schools scored very slightly higher than other blacks. Accordingly, he argued that being in a more 'middle class' (i.e. white) school stimulated the less able pupils meaning that more integrated schools would close the racial gap. Kozol leapt on this and argued that integrated schools should be introduced and this became government policy. By the late 1960s, courts were reinterpreting the Brown ruling to mean that desegregation meant a racial balance at schools. And so began the bussing of black students to schools. But the achievement gap still did not change.Coleman, who is presented as a kind of 'tragic hero' of environmentalism, then realized his fundamental error. The blacks who had been attending schools in 1965 either lived in largely areas (in the North) or were from relatively prosperous black Southern families. They were not representative of blacks and being at a school probably had nothing to do with their relatively high academic ability. Bussing also had the consequence of white flight, which Coleman documented in 1975 showing that a 5% increase in black pupils caused 10% of pupils to leave. Coleman also conceded that once the black proportion of the school population increased even slightly, 'the characteristics of the lower class room' would quickly take over, meaning it was 'understandable' that parents withdrew their children. …