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This paper analyzes 19 studies that were considered by the National Institute of Education's panel on the effects of school desegregation in order to determine desegregation's effect on black achievement, black self-esteem, and racial relations. It is stated that, overall, the results show that reading achievement improves somewhat as a result of desegregation but math achievement does not. The author notes that there is a basic problem in evaluating desegregation programs in that there is great diversity among programs, which accounts for the diverse results obtained in different studies. It is suggested that desegregation has not increased black self-esteem, and in some cases has decreased it; tentative conclusions suggest that racial relations have not been improved by desegregation. According to the author, research, and particularly long-term research, is still needed on the effects of desegregation on students and communities, as well as studies that examine under what conditions desegregation does work. (CMG)

The study described in this report investigated the effect of the classroom structure and climate of a recently desegregated school on the outgroup friendships and ethnic attitudes of white, black, and Mexican American fourth grade students in Dallas, Texas. A path analysis that charted the interethnic attitudes and attitude changes from fourth to fifth grade found that: (1) the higher the percentage of outgroup members in a class, the more outgroup friends the white and Mexican American students had; (2) the more the outgroup members displayed hostility toward the ingroup, the more negative were the ingroups' attitudes toward the outgroup among blacks and whites in general; (3) the more equal the social class and achievement levels of whites and minorities, the more minority friends the white students said they had; and the greater the discrepancy between whites and Mexican Americans, the more white friends the Mexican Americans had or said they would like to have, and the more favorable their attitudes toward whites were; and (4) the higher the self esteem of the whites, the more positive their ethnic attitudes. These results are discussed in this report within the context of a general model of factors that influence the outcomes of desegregated schools. (Author/APM)

Literature from organizational and social psychology has suggested that three types of factors influence performance, i.e., cognitive, affective and behavioral. A model was developed to test a set of propositions concerning the relationship between the three kinds of factors, and included attributions, expectancies, general emotional responses to prior performances, task satisfaction, prior task performance, subsequent effort, and final performance. Data were collected from business students (N=93) participating in a business decision-making game. Path analysis results provided considerable support for the model, including that: (1) attributions for outcome at midpoint of the game were influenced by quality of the outcome; (2) higher expectations were associated with internal attributions; and (3) affective responses were a function of prior performance, internal attributions, and high expectancies. The findings demonstrate the interplay of a variety of causal factors that contribute to performance outcome. (Author/JAC)