School Spending Closes Racial Gaps
False Assumption: Racial gaps in school achievement are primarily caused by lower spending on black students, and increasing spending will narrow those gaps.
Written by FARAgent on February 10, 2026
In the 1960s, amid Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, policymakers and educators assumed that racial gaps in school achievement stemmed mainly from lower spending on black students. The Coleman Report of 1966, a massive federal study, documented those gaps and appeared to blame them on unequal resources and discrimination. This view, rooted in beliefs about environmental malleability, drove a push for more funding. Experts across the board endorsed it; they saw increased spending as the straightforward fix to level the playing field.
Decades followed with trillions poured into schools, yet the gaps persisted. By the 1980s and beyond, evidence mounted that extra money yielded no lasting gains. In Washington, D.C., a costly boarding school experiment showed academic improvements during the week, only for them to vanish after weekends with families. Social programs consumed vast sums under the same malleability premise, but achievement disparities held steady. The harm was clear: two generations of wasted taxes, with no narrowing of the divides.
Today, experts widely recognize the assumption as false. It ignored genetic factors and overestimated how much schools could reshape outcomes. The debate has ended; the evidence proved it wrong.
People Involved
- In the era of the Great Society, proponents across the board held that black students scored lower due to skimpy school budgets. They championed the idea that pumping in more money would erase the differences. These believers pushed forward, certain that cash was the cure. [1]
▶ Supporting Quotes (1)
“Everybody in The Great Society believed blacks scored worse on school achievement tests because less money was being spent on black schools in the South.”— What's the government to do about Missing Heritability?
Organizations Involved
The US government stepped in during the 1960s, commissioning the Coleman Report to probe racial gaps in education. Officials assumed unequal spending was the root, and they rolled out Great Society programs to boost funds for black students. [1] The same government promoted the notion through these initiatives, betting on environmental tweaks to wipe out achievement disparities. [2]
▶ Supporting Quotes (2)
“At least, when the Coleman Report was commissioned in 1964, the assumption was that results would support raising taxes to spend more on blacks which would Narrow the Gap.”— What's the government to do about Missing Heritability?
“It was something of a shock when the Coleman Report in 1966 reported it couldn't find much evidence for the basic assumptions of the Great Society.”— Missing Heritability and Missing Malleability
The Foundation
The assumption took hold in the shadow of Jim Crow, where discrimination and thin school budgets for blacks looked like obvious culprits for achievement gaps. It seemed solid at the time. [2] The Coleman Report got twisted to back more spending, even though it showed gaps persisted with equal funds; this fed the sub-belief that even bigger outlays might do the trick. [1] Blank Slate thinking in the 1960s fueled expectations that IQ could bend with social fixes, ignoring twin studies that pointed to high heritability. Anti-hereditarians had little to counter with. [2] The idea dismissed heritability evidence from twin, adoption, and separated-twin studies as bunk. Early GWAS estimates came in low, stoking doubts, but larger studies later pinned more on genetics. [2] Belief in environmental malleability kept the spending faith alive, blind to genetic roles and leading to chases after subtle fixes. [1] The Coleman Report revealed home factors mattered more, making the old environmental claims look shaky. [2]
▶ Supporting Quotes (5)
“True, but it turned out that in the North that spending on black students was the same as on white students and Coleman still found sizable gaps in achievement.”— What's the government to do about Missing Heritability?
“it could turn out that the last century of twin and adoption studies all had some fatal flaw that led them to report overly high heritabilities”— What's the government to do about Missing Heritability?
“for a study of how the racial gap in school achievement was due to discrimination, lack of school spending on blacks, and other environmental factors.”— Missing Heritability and Missing Malleability
“people don't appear to be as malleable as assumed in the Blank Slate 1960s.”— Missing Heritability and Missing Malleability
“while the new GWAS studies of the human genome have documented some heritability of IQ, they haven’t yet come up with the very high levels of heritability for IQ seen in twin, twins raised apart, and adoption studies over the last century.”— Missing Heritability and Missing Malleability
How It Spread
Nice White Liberals fixated on Closing the Gap for six decades, driving the assumption through waves of social and educational policy. They spread it far and wide. [1] Elite opinion in America broadcast the view that ending Jim Crow would quickly level IQ scores between races. This shaped policy hopes for generations. [2]
▶ Supporting Quotes (2)
“The Nice White Liberals who run social and educational policy in America have been obsessed with Closing the Gap for 60 years.”— What's the government to do about Missing Heritability?
“Elite American opinion tended to assume, not all that unreasonably, that blacks would quickly catch up in IQ once Jim Crow was abolished a couple of generations ago.”— Missing Heritability and Missing Malleability
Resulting Policies
From 1964, Great Society programs hiked taxes and poured extra money into education for black students, often outspending whites, all on the bet that gaps would shrink. [1] The 1964 Civil Rights Act bankrolled a massive study, grounded in the idea that discrimination and spending shortfalls drove racial differences in schools. [2] In DC, a public boarding school pushed for budget boosts to keep students longer, aiming to shield them from family influences under the environmental fix theory. [1]
▶ Supporting Quotes (3)
“And over the last 60 years, we’ve experimented a lot with spending more on black students than on white students without too much in the way of positive results after two generations.”— What's the government to do about Missing Heritability?
“Washington DC runs the country’s only public boarding school. The teachers report that they make a lot of progress with their students from Monday through Friday. ... teachers were asking for a budget increase to add a fifth night of boarding per week.”— What's the government to do about Missing Heritability?
“The 1964 Civil Rights Act allocated one ... million ... dollars (seriously, a really large amount of money for a social science project back then) for a study of how the racial gap in school achievement was due to discrimination, lack of school spending on blacks, and other environmental factors.”— Missing Heritability and Missing Malleability
Harm Caused
Sixty years of ramped-up spending did nothing to narrow the gaps, squandering tax dollars over two generations with no lasting relative gains to show. [1] Decades of programs gulped down huge funds, chasing malleability that never came; gaps stayed put, and resources vanished into the void. [2] The DC boarding school effort highlighted how weekend family time could erase progress, but full isolation courted scandals like the Stolen Generation. [1]
▶ Supporting Quotes (3)
“So far, they keep running into the Missing Malleability problem: they can’t come up with replicable ways to raise black test scores relative to white and Asian test scores.”— What's the government to do about Missing Heritability?
“But then they go home to their families for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, and return to boarding school on Monday morning just as ghetto as on every Monday morning.”— What's the government to do about Missing Heritability?
“Enormous amounts of money have been spent on social programs since then, but, so far, people don't appear to be as malleable as assumed in the Blank Slate 1960s.”— Missing Heritability and Missing Malleability
Downfall
The assumption crumbled early with the Coleman Report in 1966, which found equal spending closed no gaps and spotlighted home backgrounds instead. It undercut the environmental pillars of Great Society dreams. [1][2] Sixty years of trials confirmed the Missing Malleability, yielding no fixes. [1] Racial IQ gaps lingered despite rising scores overall and heavy interventions. Asians pulled ahead of whites, poking holes in pure environmental explanations. [2]
▶ Supporting Quotes (3)
“Coleman still found sizable gaps in achievement. And over the last 60 years, we’ve experimented a lot with spending more on black students than on white students without too much in the way of positive results”— What's the government to do about Missing Heritability?
“It was something of a shock when the Coleman Report in 1966 reported it couldn't find much evidence for the basic assumptions of the Great Society. What seemed more important, it found, was whatever it was that students brought to school from home.”— Missing Heritability and Missing Malleability
“for IQ, though, well, everybody tended to get higher raw IQ scores, while school achievement scores tended to go up or down a little for everybody dependent upon whether conservative or progressive ideas were dominant in education. The main exception was that Asians kept scoring higher.”— Missing Heritability and Missing Malleability
Sources
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[1]
What's the government to do about Missing Heritability?reputable_journalism
- [2]