U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. will give remarks and participate in a Q&A at a two-day conference on The Coleman Report at 50: Its Relevance for Policy and Practice Today on Thursday in Baltimore. King will talk about the Obama Administration’s efforts to improve education for disadvantaged students, including advocating for college- and career-ready standards, investing in high quality early education, supporting and investing in teachers, helping communities provide a variety of social services, promoting diversity in schools and working with states to ensure that the civil rights protections of the Every Student Succeeds Act are included in their implementation plans. The Q&A will follow King’s remarks.
The 1966 study, officially titled the “Equality of Educational Opportunity Report,” was informally known as the Coleman Report and named for the Johns Hopkins University sociologist James Coleman who conducted it. The report had been ordered by Congress to determine the “lack of availability of equal educational opportunity” for minority students in the United States.
Sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, the conference begins Wednesday and will explore recent research on poverty, the family effect and public schools. Thursday’s activities will focus on policies that have changed the academic outcomes and life trajectories of our country’s disadvantaged students. The event will be livestreamed here.