Desegregation: Advantages to whites

Abstract

Researchers in the area of desegregation have become increasingly sophisticated in approaching the study of race relations among students in a multiracial setting. However, this increased sophistication seems to enable us to ask different questions, not necessarily to answer the old ones. Caught in the fundamental rift between research and policy making, educational researchers may appear to be dodging the hard questions. This is especially a problem when we address the issue of the benefits of school desegregation to whites, t In effect, researchers may seem to be avoiding answering certain questions by suggesting others.The core of the problem centers around the issue of '`benefits." We act as if there is general agreement on the extension of this term in our ordinary language, even though a casual analysis of the content implied reveals a considerable variety of meanings. There are at least three distinct questions that can be asked about the operations of a school: What's good for students? What's good for the schools? And what's good?Perhaps the most frequently asked question when an instructional or educational innovation is considered is, What's good for students? For many observers of public education, the individual student represents the "bottom line" in the educational process, and achievement test scores are the single most important indicator of that student's performance in school. When all is said and done, if a program change does not improve achievement, it is of questionable validity. Critics of school desegregation refer to data suggesting that the racial mixing of students in public schools has not measurably improved achievement and, in some cases, has caused achievement to decline. Following a quasi.medical model, these observers argue that the program must be halted before more damage is done. To the extent that an educator is concerned with students as individuals, this argument seems to present a formidable barrier to the implementation and acceptance of school desegregation. However, we believe that examining what seems to be individual-level data puts the question of benefits badly.There seems to us to be two problems in using achievement data to determine whether school desegregation is "good for kids.'" First, as recent research Findings indicate (Madaus, Kellaghan, Rakow, and King, 1979), the particular measure of student achievement adopted as criterion influences the direction of the findings. Specifically, global measures of achievement are poorer measures of impact era particular program than instruments tailoreclThe Urban Review VoL 13, No. 4, 1981