James Samuel Coleman | Biography

A sociologist deeply concerned with education, James S. Coleman was born in Bedford, Indiana, on May 12, 1926, to James Fox and Maurine Lappin Coleman. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II (1944-1946) and graduated from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana (1949). Coleman became a chemical engineer with Eastman-Kodak, Rochester, New York, but was soon so fascinated with social problems that he went on to Columbia University in New York City. He earned a Ph.D. in 1955 while working as a research associate with the Bureau of Applied Social Research (1953-1955). During that time, he became interested in the work of Paul Lazarsfeld, the Austrian-born sociologist whose studies concerning mass media's influence on society have become classics.

After a year (1955-1956) as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study of Behavioral Science, Palo Alto, California, Coleman joined the University of Chicago as assistant professor of sociology. In 1957, he first became involved with problems of schooling. Directed by the U.S. Office of Education, he and his colleagues began a detailed study of ten high schools in Illinois. Their four-year examination of academic and social aspects resulted in a research monograph Social Climates in High Schools (1961).

Coleman left Chicago in 1959 for Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, where he joined the department of social relations as associate and then full professor of sociology. After the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the U.S. commissioner of education selected Coleman and Ernest Q. Campbell of Vanderbilt University, Nashville,Tennessee, to organize a $1.5-million study concerning lost equal educational opportunities for minorities in American public schools. Over the next two years, they looked at schooling opportunities for blacks, native and Mexican Americans, poor whites, Puerto Ricans, and Asians. The study involved some 60,000 teachers and more than 600,000 students. Known as the Coleman report--more formally, Equality of Educational Opportunity--and published in 1966, the study drew many influential conclusions, among which are the following: segregation and poorer resources were not the determining factors in the academic performance of minorities; black students dropped out of school at twice the rate of whites; and minority schools, no matter how improved, cannot overcome poor home environment. Coleman vetoed tracking students according to ability and urged development of attitudes such as "black pride." He pointed out that minority students placed in predominantly middle-class schools improved dramatically with no academic loss to the more privileged students. When the Norfolk, Virginia, schools set up new integration policies in 1970, they were guided by the Coleman report.

In 1973, Coleman and his wife, Louise Richey, were divorced. He is the father of three sons, Thomas, John, and James. That year, Coleman returned to Chicago and became senior study director at the National Opinion Research Center of the university. He continued to critique America's educational establishment. In a Forbes article in 1987, he urged not blaming the deteriorating school system "all on the teachers: the greatest culprits are parents and changes in family structure." He argued that Catholic schools do a far better job of educating than either public or nonreligious private schools in America because they "function much closer to the American ideal of the 'common school,' educating children from different backgrounds alike." He also rejected the practice, begun in the 1960s, of "course proliferation." Students were allowed to select so-called relevant classes, such as sci-fi or film making, in addition to regular studies. Coleman argued this might be fine for the A student in English but not so fine for the marginal learner.

James Coleman served as advisor to President Richard Nixon in 1970 concerning plans to give northern and southern school districts some $1.5 billion to lessen the harmful effects of school segregation. However, he was critical of Nixon for claiming the administration would act against de jure (by law) segregation and not de facto segregation (what actually exists). Coleman said that racial segregation had to be erased no matter what the cause because doing so is the most "consistent mechanism for improving the qualify of education of disadvantaged children."

Among Coleman's many publications are: Adolescents and the Schools (1965); Multilevel Information Systems in Education with Nancy Karweit, Resources for Social Change (1971), and Youth: Transition from Adulthoodwith others (1974). He died in Chicago on March 25, 1995.