School Segregation and the Secondary-School Achievements of Youth in the Netherlands

Abstract

This paper contributes to the literature on the relationship between school segregation and youth educational outcomes in general, and educational inequalities in particular. Using data from a longitudinal Dutch cohort study, we test whether the ethnic composition (operationalised as both ethnic diversity and the share of minority ethnic students) or the socio-economic composition of the secondary schools which youth attend have any bearing on their academic achievement in the third year of secondary school, controlling for prior achievement. We find students of similar background characteristics and prior achievements to perform better, on average, if they attend secondary schools with higher levels of socio-economic status. The ethnic composition of youths' secondary schools is not associated with their educational achievement after school socio-economic composition is considered. However, despite the association between school composition and students' academic achievement, school composition accounts for little, if any, of the observed inequalities in secondary-school achievement across ethnic or social background. Importantly, even when taking a set of key individual background and school characteristics into account, including youths' prior achievement levels, socio-economic status and school composition, several inequalities in secondary-school achievement along socio-economic and ethnic lines persist.