School Effects: The Case for Grounded Theory

Abstract

The Coleman et al. report, Equality of Educational Opportunity, was the first of a series of major reports attesting to the impotence of school facility and staff variables in predicting cognitive achievement. The only school factors at all relevant proved to be a set of variables far removed from the explicit control of educators the background composition of the student body. (Coleman et al., 1966) Ensuing reanalyses of the Educational Opportunity data as well as independent studies confirmed the iconoclastic aspect of Coleman's original work. (For a review of the important ones, see Averch et al., 1972). Finally, the erosion of comfortably held world views about the efficacy of schools was complete with the recent publication by Christopher Jencks and his associates at Harvard's Center for Educational Policy Research. In Inequality the authors consider the effects of various school resources on tests of cognitive achievement. These resources are of three types -characteristics of the physical plant (e.g. library holdings, per-pupil expenditure), teacher characteristics (salary level, experience), and student-body characteristics (SES composition, racial composition). Again, little of the variance in standardized verbal and non-verbal tests can be attributed to these factors. (Jencks et al., 1972). The impetus for the present paper arose because of the kinds of statements which policy makers, the media, and occasionally academics have made with regard to these studies. The absence of consistent facility and staff effects (as measured in these surveys)