Family background outweighs school resources in predicting student success.

Evidence

School desegregation gives black students access to resources that their previous schools lacked such as science laboratories, better teacher to student ratios, more educated and experienced teachers and other similar aspects. However, studies by James Coleman and Christopher Jencks have shown that school effects do not matter. Instead they found that family background, especially the education, occupation and income of the parents (or parent) proved to be the most significant factor to a child’s success at school (Olzak, 5-25-99). Since it would be impossible to give children a new family background, this data seems to show that busing them to “better” white schools would not improve their future success. — Marcy Crouch, Magnet Schools and Other Means of…, 29

Categorization

• QUESTION: If family background dominates, does that make school-based desegregation structurally futile, or are Coleman/Jencks measuring the wrong outcomes?
• XREF: Connects to the broader Coleman Report debate over whether ‘school effects’ can ever be isolated from family inputs.