This study reanalyzes the 12th grade data of the Coleman study and reexamines the effects of school characteristics on student achievement using multilevel models. Findings indicate considerable between-school variability in achievement, which suggests school effects. School resources and school composition were overall positive predictors of student achievement net of family background. School characteristics explained a substantial amount of the between-school variation in achievement.

Four decades after the pathbreaking Coleman report, researchers are still working to address its primary message: that school social composition and resources are not important for understanding and addressing educational inequality. Using the original Equality of Educational Opportunity data, this study applied a two-level hierarchical linear model to partition the variation in ninth-grade students’ verbal achievement into its within- and between-school components and to measure the associations among school-level social composition, resources, teacher characteristics, and peer characteristics and achievement. We estimated that 40% of the achievement variance was between schools, whereas Coleman and colleagues had originally estimated that only 8.5%–18% lay between schools. Explanatory analyses suggested that the racial/ethnic and social class composition of a student’s school was over 1 3/4 times more important than a student’s individual race/ethnicity or social class for understanding educational outcomes. Further, within-school Black-White achievement gaps and social class differences were explained in part by curricular differentiation and teachers’ preferences toward middle-class students. These findings are contrasted with those from a set of traditional ordinary least squares regression models and the past conclusions drawn from the Coleman report.

This quantitative study employs a seasonal perspective to assess the importance of neighborhood and school contexts for reading achievement as of school entry and through the first 2 years of elementary school.

In this chapter, I discuss the evolution and effectiveness of Title I, the largest federal investment in the nation’s public schools. Specifically, I summarize how the program has evolved from one that is ineffectual and poorly implemented to one that is relatively well implemented and somewhat effective, but clearly in need of further improvement. I conclude the chapter by discussing how the Title I research base may inform current and future efforts to research and evaluate the program.