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Section 402 ordered a national survey
The law
Section 402 required the Commissioner of Education to report to the president and Congress on the lack of equal educational opportunities in public schools because of race, color, religion, or national origin. The Johnson administration wanted hard data showing that segregation by race remained widespread and that the schools Black children attended were inferior to those white children attended. With that report in hand, the federal government could act decisively, possibly cutting off funds to segregated systems and spending the billion-plus dollars the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 set aside.
Finding a researcher
The assignment meant surveying schools across the entire country. The Commissioner of Education and his team had to find someone who had run a study that large, and James Coleman was one of the few. His recent study of how nerds and jocks behave differently in high schools had involved crunching a lot of data about kids in schools.
The deadline
Coleman took the job in 1965 with 16 months to deliver the report. Designing a study of 600,000 students with a report due in that time would be very hard to pull off even today.
Why did Congress order a survey, not just act?
Education had long been a state and local responsibility, and the federal Office of Education had no comparable nationwide measure of how students performed. The first national assessment, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, did not begin until 1969. Before Section 402, no one could say with national data how unequal schools by race really were.
What power did the Civil Rights Act give over school funds?
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in any program receiving federal money. Agencies could end funding to a school district after a hearing found that it had refused to comply. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed in 1965 sent large new sums to districts, which gave Title VI a great deal more money to withhold.
How did the 1965 education law distribute money?
Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act directed federal funds to school districts according to the number of low-income children they served. President Lyndon Johnson signed the law in April 1965 at a one-room schoolhouse in Texas where he had begun his own schooling. Title I remains the largest federal program for elementary and secondary schools.
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