ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at two large research studies, one on Headstart and the other the Coleman Report, which both initially seemed to provide strong evidence that schools do not mitigate social inequality. According to early evaluations, Headstart programs raised disadvantaged children's IQ's by only a few points and for only a relatively short period of time. Headstart did reduce social inequality in schooling by enabling poor and minority group children to perform when they began school at a level more nearly like that of better-off majority children. Another large-scale and famous study, the Coleman Report (1966), can also be interpreted to support the idea that schools reduce social inequality, although originally it was taken to prove the opposite. Barbara Heyns' research provided a major breakthrough. By comparing children's cognitive growth when schools are open (in winter) to children's growth when schools are closed (in summer), she separated effects of home background from effects of school.
