Schools and Inequality: A Multilevel Analysis of Coleman's Equality of Educational Opportunity Data

Abstract

Background/Context The Equality of Educational Opportunity study is widely recognized as one of the most important studies on schooling ever performed. The findings from the report have shaped the field of education, national education policies, and wider public and scholarly opinion regarding the contributions of schools and schooling to equality and productivity in the United States. Despite past reanalyses of the data and decades of research on the effects of schools as organizations, the report's fundamental finding—that a student's family background is far more important than school social composition and school resources for understanding student outcomes—still retains much of its currency. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Using the original Equality of Educational Opportunity data, this study replicated Coleman's statistical models but also applied a two-level hierarchical linear model (HLM) to measure the effects of school-level social composition, resources, teacher characteristics, and peer characteristics on ninth-grade students’ verbal achievement. Research Design HLM allows researchers to disentangle how schools and students’ family backgrounds contribute to learning outcomes. The methodology offers a clearer interpretation of the relative effects of school characteristics, including racial/ethnic composition, and family background, including race/ethnicity and social class, on students’ academic outcomes. Findings/Results Our results suggest t…