School Desegregation: A long-term study PDF
Preview School Desegregation: A long-term study
SCHOOL DESEGREGATION PERSPECTIVES IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY A Series of Texts and Monographs • Edited by Elliot Aronson INTRINSIC MOTIVATION By Edward L. Deci. 1975 SCHOOL DESEGREGATION By Harold B. Gerard and Norman Miller. 1975 A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual shipment. For further information please contact the publisher. SCHOOL DESEGREGATION A LONG-TERM STUDY Harold B. Gerard University of California, Los Angeles and Norman Miller University of Southern California PLENUM PRESS • NEW YORK AND LONDON Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gerard, Harold Benjamin, 1923- School desegregation. (Perspectives in social psychology) Includes bibliographies and index. 1. School integration - United States - Addresses, essays, lec- tures.1. Miller, Norman, 1933- joint author. II. Title. LC214.2.G47 370.19'342 75-28037 ISBN-13: 978-1-4613-4312-7 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4613-4310-3 001: 10.1007/978-1-4613-4310-3 ©1975 Plenum Press. New York Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1975 A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 227 West 17th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011 United Kingdom edition published by Plenum Press, London A Division of Plenum Publishing Company, Ltd. Davis House (4th Floor), 8 Scrubs Lane, Hariesden, London, NWI0 6SE, England All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher Contributors LOIS Blener, University of Massachusetts, Boston Tora Kay Blkson, University of California, Los Angeles Edward S. Conolley, University of Southern California, Los Angeles Desy S. Gerard, University of California, Los Angeles Harold B. Gerard, University of California, Los Angeles Jacquelme D. Goodchzlds, University of California, Los Angeles Duane Green, University of California, Los Angeles James A. Green, Los Angeles County Mental Health Services Irvmg G. Hendnck, University of California at Riverside Terrence D. Jackson, University of California, Los Angeles Eugene B. Johnson, Brooklyn College, City University of New York Norman Mtller, University of Southern California, Los Angeles Vwian Tong Nagy, Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic, Los Angeles David Redfearn, University of California, Los Angeles Harry Smger, University of California at Riverside Michel Thelza, University of California, Los Angeles Erhan Yasar, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey Merle Lmda Zabrack, University of Southern California, Los Angeles v Contents Introduction 1 Harold B. Gerard and Norman Miller 1. The Study 9 Harold B. Gerard 2. The Historical Setting 25 Irving G. Hendrick 3. The Overall Research Design and Some Methodical Considerations 53 David Redfearn and Harold B. Gerard 4. Achievement 69 Harry Singer, Harold B. Gerard, and David Redfearn 5. IQ 89 Norman Miller and Merle Linda Zabrack 6. Effects of Desegregatwn on Achievement-Relevant Motivation 121 Lois Biener and Harold B. Gerard VB Vlll Contents 7. The School Experience and Adjustment 151 Jacqueline D. Goodchilds, James A. Green, and Tora Kay Bikson 8. Personality Traits and Adjustment 167 Duane Green, Norman Miller, and Desy S. Gerard 9. Speech Anxiety and Linguistic Changes 193 Tora Kay Bikson, Harold B. Gerard, Michel Thelia, and Erhan Yasar 10. Social Contact in the Desegregated Classroom 211 Harold B. Gerard, Terrence D. Jackson, and Edward S. Conolley 11. Teacher Influences in the Desegregated Classroom 243 Eugene B. Johnson, Harold B. Gerard, and Norman Miller 12. Family Characteristics, Attitudes, and Values 261 Vivian Tong Nagy 13. Summary and Conclusions 277 Norman Miller A uthor Index 305 Subject Index 309 Introduction B. HAROLD GERARD AND NORMAN MILLER In the fall of 1965, when the school board of the Riverside Unified School District made its momentous decision to desegregate the ele mentary schools in Riverside, both of us were faculty members in the psychology department on the Riverside campus of the University of California. The riots in Watts had occurred the previous August and the shock waves were being felt around the cou~try. Although the black population of Riverside at the time was only 6% or 7%, people were ap prehensive. A story appeared in the local paper, The Rzverside Press Enterprzse, about several Blacks who were watching the burning and looting in Watts on TV. One of them, excited by what he saw, ex claimed, "Man-let's burn here, too." The others in the bar were more level-headed and fortunately dissuaded him from following his impulse. Barely two weeks later, however, someone set fire to one of the build ings of Lowell School, in the eastside ghetto area. Nothing was left of the building but a charred shell. People in Riverside, of all ethnic groups, were generally edgy in the face of a seemingly volatile situation. Agitation by minority parents for improved education for their children seemed to be reinforced by the general unrest. We had followed the action in the school district closely and when the desegregation decision was made, we felt that it represented a unique opportunity for social scientists to study the progress of the desegregation program. And in spite of the fact that one of us had met HAROLD B GERARD. University of California, Los Angeles, Califorma NORMAN MILLER • Umverslty of Southern Califorma, Los Angeles, Callforma 1 2 IntroductIOn with frustration in attempting to arrange to study the effects of a bus sing program in New Haven, Connecticut, the preceding year, we both believed that social scientists had a social responsibility to try to assess the effects of planned social changes. Further, we felt that the schools should be armed with as much information as possible as to what consequences might follow from the decision to desegregate. A search of the literature yielded only two studies that had been done prior to that time, which itself shocked us. With all the talk and furor about desegregation both before and after the historic 1954 Brown us. Board of EducatIOn decision, we would have thought that social scientists, especially those working in the education field, would have carried out some studies of the problem. The two previous studies, one in Louisville, Kentucky, and the other in Washington, D.C., were not very informative. The data from both were fraught with problems that made interpretation of the results difficult. At the time of the school board's decision, James Coleman was still in the process of collecting his data on a nationwide sample of schools. His study was not designed to investigate the effects of an intervention that suddenly and drastically changed the entire complexion of a school district. Coleman's children were, by and large, in neighborhood schools or in feeder schools where a tradition of either segregation or integration was longstanding. Being dismayed by the lack of knowledge in the area, we felt a strong sense of urgency to learn something about the problem. We began to formulate a tentative plan to follow a small sample of minority children through the elementary grades to determine how they fared in the new school situation. Since some funding would be necessary, we approached several private foundations for a relatively small amount of money. The Rockefeller Foundation came to our aid with a small grant, which they subsequently increased. The regents of the University of California, upon learning about our plans and about the Rockefeller grant, offered to match the money we had already received. A number of other people on the Riverside campus, Jane Mercer in the Sociology Department, Fred Gearing in Anthropology, and Harry Singer and Thomas Carter in Education, felt that here was an op portunity for people in different departments to join forces to study an issue of overriding local and national importance. Robert Docter, who is now a very visible member of the Los Angeles Board of Education, was at that time associated with the California State Department of Educa tion. He got wind of our plans and proceeded to convince us to raise our IntroductIOn 3 sights and study all of the minority children involved in the desegrega tion program as well as a sample of "Anglos" in the receiving schools. If we agreed to do that, he promised that he would attempt to provide us with a sizable grant from the McAteer Fund of the Division of Com pensatory Education. This grant did materialize, so we proceeded to gear ourselves for a large-scale study. The first data were collected in the spring of 1966. The upper echelon administration of the Riverside School District were eager to help. We do not have enough words to thank Bruce Miller, who was then Superintendent of Schools; Ray Berry, the Associate Superintendent at the time, who later became Superintendent; Mabel Purl, the chief psychologist; and Jess E. Wall, the Director of Intergroup Relations. The research would not have been possible without their full support and cooperation. We are especially grateful to Ray Berry for his statesmanship, patience, and forebearance during the entire course of our study. Up until that time, both of us had worked almost exclusively in the psychological laboratory and were unprepared for the trauma of an in terdisciplinary, interinstitutional study of a very hot social issue about which neither we nor anybody else knew very much. Rather than rush ing into the study with a broad-gauge, atheoretical shotgun, we felt we ought to have some perspective, however vague, to guide us. As we point out in Chapter 1, many of the proponents of desegregation believed that the lack of achievement of minority children stemmed from a motivational or value deficit and that entry into the majority "Anglo" classroom would somehow reduce or compensate for that deficit. If these people were right, we were, in effect, dealing with issues in personality development and change. This model of "value mediation of achieve ment" and the assumed susceptibility of values to social influence be came our underlying focus. With retrospective wisdom we would take a different approach were we to begin again. At the time, however, those most intimately involved with the problem seemed to favor that type of approach. The early work of Pettigrew and especially Katz emphasized the importance of these aspects of personality. When the Coleman report, which was published shortly after we began our research, also gave prominence to the lateral transmission of values as the mechanism mediating beneficial effects of integration, we certainly felt reassured about the wisdom of our research strategy, which would enable us to test this model carefully.
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