In 1964, as part of the Civil Rights Act, Congress authorized a national study of equality of educational opportunity. The study was conducted under the leadership of James Coleman.

Eric A. Hanushek of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University has written a new article about one of the findings of the report: the existence of large achievement disparities across races and regions within the United States. For instance, Coleman found that in 1965, the average black 12th grader in the rural South registered an achievement level that was comparable to that of a white 7th grader in the urban Northeast.

In this video, Eric Hanushek talks with EdNext Editor Paul E. Peterson about what the Coleman Report found about the size of the achievement gap and how that gap has changed over time.