| Sumario: | This article focuses on different assumptions and beliefs that guide ethnic education in the United States. Perhaps the best-publicized assumptions guiding judicial educational policy today is that segregated schools are inherently inferior, and that the equalization of per-pupil expenditures is essential to an equalization of education. A more general assumption, encompassing these and other policies, is that large disparities in school performances among racial or ethnic groups are unusual and suspicious, and reflect differences in the way those groups are treated by the schools and/or the society. These are not unreasonable assumptions, but reasonableness is no substitute for empirical verification, especially when so much is at stake. There is not a priori reason why statistics collected at a given institution must be solely the result of the policies of that institution, rather than the characteristics of the population in question. Other common educational doctrines seldom seriously tested include the belief that school performance is greatly influenced by family socioeconomic status, class size, teacher-student differences in ethnicity, and the cultural bias of tests. Statistical correlations are abundantly available in support of some of these doctrines, but the principle that correlation is not causation, cannot be simply a pious disclaimer uttered in passing, while proceeding post haste to equate the two in cognitive conclusion or policy application.
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