Racial Problems and Policy in the American Public Schools

Abstract

School board members and superintendents in a national sample of school districts with some nonwhite students are found to be generally insensitive to and unable to identify racial problems in their schools. Policy responses to racial problems are found to be marked by ambiguity and lack of clear corrective action. Civil rights activity and white community concern appear to increase school-governor sensitivity to racial problems and the likelihood of action within the schools to correct such problems. It has become increasingly evident during the last decade that racial problems in the public schools are not unique to the South but in fact affect nearly all schools throughout the entire United States. These problems are serious, often interfering with the functioning of the educational system, and have attracted increasing attention from both educators and social scientists. Significantly, most of our information about racial problems in the schools has come from school districts in which racial issues are immediately salient. The consequence is that we know very little about the management of racial problems throughout most of the school system.' This paper brings to bear a greater range of data than has previously been utilized to examine school-governor sensitivity to or recognition of racial problems, policy to deal with racial problems, and the effect of informal and *The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the Center for the Advanced Study of Educational Administration during a portion of the time they devoted to the preparation of this paper. CASEA is a national research and development center which was established under the Cooperative Research Program of the U. S. Office of Education. The research reported in this paper was conducted as part of the research and development program of the center.