A Critique of "Trends in School Segregation, 1968-73"

Suggesting that James Coleman's paper on massive school desegragation reveals methodological flaws of such magnitude that they raise serious questions as to the validity of the conclusions, this paper addresses a full sequence of perceived methodological errors found in the Coleman document, but does not dismiss the conclusions based upon initial errors, no matter how cogent they be. This approach makes the implicit assumption that, at each step, all previous operations upon the data are both well reasoned and technically correct. As the critique progresses, it becomes obvious to what extent this assumption is incorrect. The first point made concerns the data base used, and, by implication, the range of variables considered for inclusion in the various regression models used. The second point relates to the unit of analysis employed. Another potential problem concerns the partitioning of the data into two categories based upon school district size. The treatment (or lack of treatment) of the standard errors of the regression coefficients is also criticized. Finally, one of the more misleading of the methodological errors is reflected in the attempt to control for the unique characteristics of the cities through the use of dummy variables. (Author/AM)