Coleman revisited: School segregation, peers, and frog ponds

Goldsmith, Pat Rubio. (2011). Coleman revisited: School segregation, peers, and frog ponds. American Educational Research Journal, 48(3), 508-535.


Students in schools with high minority populations are still achieving at lower levels than students in schools with primarily white populations. Even after efforts to desegregate schools, and even after nearly ten years of No Child Left Behind, segregation and educational inequity remain major problems. This article underscores those ongoing problems. The article does not get directly at why these problems exist, but it does try to remove one possible explanation, the idea that it is mainly “normative effects” that cause the inequity. Normative effects relate to the popular notion that students tend to become like their peers. Thus, in minority schools there are peer characteristics that tend to work against educational attainment, and by associating with peers with these characteristics, students take on those characteristics. Similarly, in white middle-class schools there are characteristics that lead to educational attainment, so by being with those students one could become more like them. The popular belief in normative effects has led to white flight from urban districts or enrollment of middle-class children in private schools where they would be “protected” from the “bad influence” of minority peers. Such notions only perpetuate segregation and educational inequality. Most dangerously, such notions put the blame on the students themselves (and their families) rather than looking at and addressing the deeper social inequities that really are the cause of educational inequity.

Goldsmith does not deny that normative effects are at work in schools, but she also maintains that a competing notion, the “frog pond” effect, is operating simultaneously. The frog pond effect occurs when a student is one of the highest-achieving individuals within his or her milieu. A student may be at the top of his or her class in one environment, but may not have nearly that high status in another environment. For example, a minority student who is the highest achieving student in his or her graduating class in a largely minority school may not be considered a high-achieving student in a more selective white middle-class school. Though class rank and educational tracks may not really mean the same from one kind of school to the other, being at the top of one’s class definitely has implications for success, for self-confidence, and for college admissions. The research presented here on long-term attainment clearly shows that class rank has a positive effect on achievement and attainment, regardless of where the person went to school. Goldsmith believes that normative effects and frog pond effects operating simultaneously tend to cancel each other out, but in different ways for different schools: “Hence, normative effects are a disadvantage in minority-concentrated schools, but frog-pond effects are an advantage. In White-concentrated schools, normative effects are an advantage, but frog-pond effects are a disadvantage”(pp. 530-531). It is clear that we still need to address the problems of segregation and of educational inequity. I do not pretend that I fully understood the research methods used here to statistically analyze national assessment data, but I did fully appreciate the effort to debunk a popular but dangerous notion about why minority schools have lower achievement levels. The biggest challenge will be to try to change views, minds, and hearts to break the current patterns.