Brown v. Board of Educationand the Coleman Report: Social Science Research and the Debate on Educational Equality

Abstract

In light of the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ruling, this article focuses on how the majority opinion in Brown set a precedent for the use of social science research in defining and examining inequity in education. This article argues that following Brown, social science research has gained prominence in its social function in shaping the debate in equal educational opportunity. Whereas Brown introduced racial desegregation in the governmental agenda, social science research since the 1960s has sustained the societal concerns on the challenge of inequality. This article examines how the use of social science research in Equality of Educational Opportunity (J. S. Coleman et al., 1966), an extensive study of schools and schooling under the direction of James Coleman of Johns Hopkins University and Ernest Campbell of Vanderbilt University during the mid 1960s, shaped the course of education research and policy toward the notion of equal educational opportunities. Further, this article discusses the more recent work of William Julius Wilson (1987) that shifts the equality of opportunity debate out of the courts and from individual and group opportunities to the equality of life chances.