Remedies for Segregation: Some Lessons From Research

Abstract

stability has been attained and ways in which desegregation is most likely to spur advances (Forehand, Ragosta, & Rock, 1976), addresses the same issues as the more pessimistic earlier analyses, but gives a clearer understanding of the desegregation process by using more complex methodologies and perspectives. Earlier desegregation research employed the more traditional methods of sociologists and economists: surveys, multiple regression analyses of quantifiable variables and input-output research. These techniques, when used by themselves, tend to blur many critical variables and treat desegregation as if it were a uniform program in all racially mixed schools. However, desegregation, like education itself, is a complex process and must be studied accordingly. The recent addition of ethnographic methodology has helped strengthen the analyses of the desegregation process which has culminated in our greater ability to understand program strengths and weaknesses. Ethnographers intensively examine a school or classroom over the extended time necessary (often 2 o more years) to understand such questions as how a desegregation program functions and how it affects the relation-