The rise and fall of school integration in Israel: research and policy analysis

Abstract

School integration (desegregation) was introduced in Israeli junior high schools in 1968 with the aim of increasing educational equality and decreasing (Jewish) ethnic divides. While never officially abandoned, a de facto retreat from this policy has been observed since the early 1990s, despite the voluminous research that revealed its positive, though moderate, educational outcomes. This shift in educational emphases reflected profound societal changes, fed by global neo-liberal trends and educational consumerism, which research-based arguments supporting integration were too weak to resist. The ascent and waning of school integration in Israel provide an instructive case for analysing the interconnection of educational policy, educational research, and societal changes, demonstrating the weakness of research in sustaining educational policy in the face of counteracting social and political developments.

Notes

1. We are aware that didactic fit may be influenced by teaching methods and pedagogical style, no less than by class homogeneity. Our argument about didactic fit rests however on the notion that conventional, frontal teaching is prevalent in most schools.

2. Findings regarding differential effects for high and low achievers are inconclusive. Many studies show an academic gain of low achievers that outweighs the loss of high achievers (e.g., Coleman et al., 1966; Leiter, 1983; Dar & Resh, 1986b; Terwel & Van den Eeden, 1992; Hoffer, 1992; Aitkin & Zozovsky, 1994; Zimmer & Toma, 2000; Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003; Schofield, 2010). Other studies point to zero-sum outcomes (e.g., Willms, 1986; Willms & Chen, 1989; Rumberger & Palardy, 2005). Kerckhoff (1986) have found enriched composition benefiting low achievers more than the high achievers in reading but vice versa in mathematics. A recent British ethnographic study provides an interesting testimony in this regard. White middle class parents who have intentionally sent their children to learn in a comprehensive school together with disadvantaged white and black children, expressed satisfaction with their children’s attainments, including their academic achievement (Reay et al., 2007).

3. This description refers to the Jewish students. Israeli Arab pupils, about 20% of the population, are instructed in Arabic in separate Arabic schools.

4. The 1968 reform added one free compulsory year of schooling (ninth grade). In 1979, high school education of 12 years became free and the tenth grade compulsory.

5. Intentional integration was carried out at the junior high schools, but studies of ‘natural’ socioeconomic and ethnic heterogeneity at the elementary level were also included in this summary.

6. Innovative instructional practices adapted to heterogeneous classes were introduced in Israel in many schools and followed in some cases by systematic evaluative studies that disclosed mixed results (e.g., Ben Ari & Rich, 1992).

7. Although desegregation in the US was defined mainly in racial/ethnic terms, there is a strong argument for considering school SES as a factor (not as a control) in studying compositional effects (see, Jencks & Meyer, 1990; Rumberger & Palardy, 2005).

8. Also outside Israel only few studies specified research models that incorporated mediating educational processes. (As examples see Barr & Dreeben, 1983; Jencks & Mayer, 1990; Wells & Crain, 1997; Wells & Oakes, 1998; Rumberger & Palardy, 2005; Opdenakker & Van Damme, 2007.)

9. For accounts of similar developments see, for example, Schofield and Hausmann (2004) and Wells et al., (2005) in the US, and McGregor (2009) in Australia.