Differences in the objective inputs to such schools--pupil-teacher ratios, the number of books in the library, per pupil expenditures, the age and quality of buildings--had no independent effect on student achievement as measured by standardized tests of verbal ability.

All this Covid-19 and my extended convalescence has allowed me to read a greater volume of material than I usually have time for.  In the past, I have been in the habit of posting a very general review of a book once I have finished and then posting some of the more artful, insightful, or informative passages in following days.  For longer and more interesting books, this can go on for weeks.

I am now at the point where serial postings of content is insufficient for the number of books I have been reading.  Consequently, I am going to start posting some of them intermittently and/or by chapter.  We will see if this works.  

First up is a book I have not yet finished, On Character: Essays by James Q. Wilson, one of our more thoughtful and insightful academics of the past few decades.  I am thoroughly enjoying the material on a dizzying array of topics.  Thoroughly recommended.  

This and subsequent citations are from the original essay, The rediscovery of character: private virtue and public policy by James Q. Wilson in the Fall of 1985.

Nothing better illustrates the changes in how we think about policy than the problem of finding ways to improve educational attainment and student conduct in the schools. One of the first reports of the 1966 study on education by James Coleman and his associates appeared in this magazine. As every expert on schooling knows, that massive survey of public schools found that differences in the objective inputs to such schools--pupil-teacher ratios, the number of books in the library, per pupil expenditures, the age and quality of buildings--had no independent effect on student achievement as measured by standardized tests of verbal ability.
 
But as many scholars have forgotten, the Coleman Report also found that educational achievement was profoundly affected by the family background and peer-group environment of the pupil. And those who did notice this finding understandably despaired of devising a program that would improve the child's family background or social environment. Soon, many specialists had concluded that schools could make no difference in a child's life prospects, and so the burden of enhancing those prospects would have to fall on other measures. (To Christopher Jencks, the inability of the schools to reduce social inequality was an argument for socialism.) 
 
Parents, of course, acted as if the Coleman Report had never been written. They sought, often at great expense, communities that had good schools, never doubting for a moment that they could tell the difference between good ones and bad ones or that this difference in school quality would make a difference in their child's education. The search for good schools in the face of evidence that there was no objective basis for that search seemed paradoxical, even irrational.
 

In 1979, however, Michael Rutter and his colleagues in England published a study that provided support for parental understanding by building on the neglected insights of the Coleman Report. In Fifteen Thousand Hours, the Rutter group reported what they learned from following a large number of children from a working-class section of inner London as they moved through a dozen non-selective schools in their community. Like Coleman before him, Rutter found that the objective features of the schools made little difference; like almost every other scholar, he found that differences in verbal intelligence at age ten were the best single predictor of educational attainment in the high school years. But unlike Coleman, he looked at differences in that attainment across schools, holding individual ability constant. Rutter found that the schools in inner London had very different effects on their pupils, not only in educational achievement but also in attendance, classroom behavior, and even delinquency. Some schools did a better job than others in teaching children and managing their behavior.
 
The more effective schools had two distinctive characteristics. First, they had a more balanced mix of children--that is, they contained a substantial number of children of at least average intellectual ability. By contrast, schools that were less effective had a disproportionate number of low-ability students. If you are a pupil of below average ability, you do better, both academically and behaviorally, if you attend a school with a large number of students who are somewhat abler than you. The intellectual abilities of the students, it turned out, were far more important than their ethnic or class characteristics in producing this desirable balance.
 
Second, the more effective schools had a distinctive ethos: an emphasis on academic achievement, the regular assignment of homework, the consistent and fair use of rewards (especially praise) to enforce generally agreed-upon standards of conduct, and energetic teacher involvement in directing classroom work. Subsequent research by others has generally confirmed the Rutter account, so much so that educational specialists are increasingly discussing what has come to be known as the "effective schools" model.
 
What is striking about the desirable school ethos is that it so obviously resembles what almost every developmental psychologist describes as the desirable family ethos. Parents who are warm and caring but who also use discipline in a fair and consistent manner are those parents who, other things being equal, are least likely to produce delinquent offspring. A decent family is one that instills a decent character in its children; a good school is one that takes up and continues in a constructive manner this development of character.
 
Teaching students with the right mix of abilities and in an atmosphere based on the appropriate classroom ethos may be easier in private than in public schools, a fact which helps explain why Colean (joined now by Thomas Hoffer and Sally Kilgore) was able to suggest in the 1982 book, High School Achievement, that private and parochial high schools may do somewhat better than public ones in improving the vocabulary and mathematical skills of students and that this private-school advantage may be largely the result of the better behavior of children in those classrooms. In the authors' words, "achievement and discipline are intimately intertwined." Public schools that combine academic demands and high disciplinary standards produce greater educational achievement than public schools that do not. As it turns out, private and parochial schools are better able to sustain these desirable habits of work behavior --this greater display of good character--than are public ones.

 It is an irony that 55 years after the Coleman report and 36 years after Wilson's essay, much of the education establishment still focuses on inputs rather than behaviors.