Majority Black School Research Articles

Racialized Closures and the Shuttering of Black Schools: Evidence from National Data

In this article Danielle Marie Greene-Bell and Francis A. Pearman II examine racial disparities in school closures across the United States, with a particular interest in majority Black schools. Using survival analysis and longitudinal data, they find that majority Black schools are far more likely to close than non-majority Black schools and that these elevated closure rates are not fully accounted for by observable differences like achievement levels, enrollment patterns, and the socioeconomic status of their surrounding communities. Using the theoretical frame of BlackQuantCrit, they argue that this pattern of findings is consistent with the theory that school closures demonstrate historical and contemporary forms of anti-Blackness that affect US schools and the geography of opportunity more broadly.

The discipline gap in context: The role of school racial and ethnic diversity and within school positionality on out-of-school suspensions

Disparities in exclusionary discipline practices are well-documented; however, variation in Black students' disciplinary experiences across different racial and ethnic school compositions remains understudied. Utilizing a state-wide dataset (N = 769,050 students in J = 1296 schools), we examined student- and school-level factors that contribute to suspensions for Black students across schools with varying racial and ethnic diversity. Consistent with prior research, we found that Black students were disproportionately suspended more often, for more days, and more likely for soft offenses. We also found that students in majority Black schools (i.e., those where >50% of the students were Black) had the highest unadjusted rates of suspension. However, when controlling for multiple other student- and school-level characteristics, including overall suspension rates, we found that Black students attending majority White schools had a higher adjusted risk of suspension than in majority Black or heterogenous diverse schools, suggesting higher rates of differential treatment in White majority schools. We discuss the implications of these results and the role school psychologists play in supporting professional development, training, and data-based decision making to reduce disproportionality.

Policy Solutions: It’s more than money: Supporting the Black school

Former NFL football star Deion Sanders set off controversy when he announced he was leaving his post as head football coach at Mississippi’s Jackson State University, a historically Black college or university (HBCU), to go to University of Colorado. Jonathan E. Collins discusses how the concept of HBCUs could be taken up by public schools that primarily serve Black students. This would be preferable to considering majority Black schools as segregation failures lacking in resources.

Challenging anti-Black linguistic racism in schools amidst the ‘what works’ agenda

ABSTRACT Education policy in England’s schools is driven by the ‘what works’ agenda, characterised by interventions claiming to be scientifically objective and evidence-led. In this article I show how what works interventions reproduce anti-Black linguistic racism because to be perceived as someone who is ‘working’, racialised children must assimilate their language practices towards idealised whiteness. I present case studies of two teachers working in low-income, majority Black schools who rejected what works interventions concerning a commercially produced curriculum package and the so-called word gap, both of which framed racialised children as displaying linguistic deficiencies in need of correcting. I describe various institutional oppositions the teachers faced, including having their own language, expertise and evidence questioned by white management. I argue that the what works agenda is crafted by the state to delegitimise anti-racist efforts, and that for the state, what counts as ‘working’ is simply the reproduction of idealised linguistic whiteness.

Sustaining a Sense of Success: The Protective Role of Teacher Working Conditions during the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 shuttered schools across the United States, upending traditional approaches to education. We examine teachers’ experiences during emergency remote teaching in the spring of 2020 using responses to a working conditions survey from a sample of 7,841 teachers across 206 schools and 9 states. Teachers reported a range of challenges related to engaging students in remote learning and balancing their professional and personal responsibilities. Teachers in high-poverty and majority Black schools perceived these challenges to be the most severe, suggesting the pandemic further increased existing educational inequities. Using data from both pre-post and retrospective surveys, we find that the pandemic and pivot to emergency remote teaching resulted in a sudden, large drop in teachers’ sense of success. We also demonstrate how supportive working conditions in schools played a critical role in helping teachers to sustain their sense of success. Teachers were less likely to experience declines in their sense of success when they worked in schools with strong communication, targeted training, meaningful collaboration, fair expectations, and authentic recognition during the pandemic.

“I Wanted Diversity, But Not So Much”: Middle-Class White Parents, School Choice, and the Persistence of Anti-Black Stereotypes

This interview study examines the school choices of white middle class parents who live in a large Northeastern city. Interviewees identify as progressive urbanites and express an appreciation for racial diversity. Simultaneously, interviewees draw on anti-Black stereotypes when evaluating school options and avoiding majority Black schools. While previous studies suggest that diversity-seeking whites are well intentioned and inadvertently reproduce racism through school choice, my analysis allows for greater consideration of white parents’ investment in the reproduction of white racial dominance.

Relationships between urban vegetation and academic achievement vary with social and environmental context

Urban greening is increasingly suggested as a means of supporting the health and well-being of urban populations. Given positive relationships between vegetation and academic performance, urban greening could support scholastic achievement, enhancing future success in life. These relationships may vary among social and environmental contexts, however, suggesting greening benefits populations unequally. We investigated relationships between vegetation and academic achievement as indicated by high school graduation rates across social and environmental contexts in the continental US, assessing this variation and the potential for urban vegetation to support academic attainment. We categorized 1,333 public high schools based on the socioeconomic and environmental attributes of their attendance areas using k-means clustering. We identified variation in relationships between vegetation and graduation rate based on socioeconomic status (SES) and estimated conditional mean rates by environmental category using multilevel beta regression. We found significant variation in the relationship between school graduation rate and vegetation among vegetation types and socio-economic contexts. Graduation rates were lower in high-intensity (i.e., more extensively built), low tree-cover settings and higher in lower-intensity (i.e., less extensively built), high tree-cover or agricultural settings. Agricultural vegetation associated positively with graduation rate broadly, while non-forest vegetation exhibited negative relationships for low-SES, majority Black schools. Tree canopy exhibited positive relationships that were stronger for high-SES schools and low-SES, majority Latino/a schools. These results highlight the importance of social and environmental context in mediating relationships between vegetation and academic achievement and the need to consider these disparities in supporting academic success through urban vegetation management.

How Organizational Minorities Form and Use Social Ties: Evidence from Teachers in Majority-White and Majority-Black Schools

This article draws on 11 months of multisite ethnographic fieldwork and 103 interviews to investigate how teachers in school faculty of varying racial compositions form and use their social ties to...

Structural limitations and functional alternatives reducing suspensions and preserving racial suspension gaps

ABSTRACT Although studies on school suspensions focus on the disproportionate number of Black students receiving them, policy changes reducing suspensions offer new insights into the racial gap. Using annual school-level data from the Chicago Public Schools (2012–2016), I evaluate how a suspension reduction policy affected the number of students receiving suspensions, and the suspension gaps between majority Black schools and other schools. I find that the policy reduced overall suspensions but still preserved racial suspension gaps. I argue how structural limitations and functional alternatives played important roles in these consequences, and how this suggests the importance of contextual factors in assisting structural changes.

School racial composition and lifetime non-medical use of prescription painkillers: Evidence from the national longitudinal study of adolescent to adult health

ObjectiveTo investigate the possible effects of middle and high school racial composition on later reporting of lifetime non-medical use of prescription painkillers (NMUPP) in young adulthood, and to explore whether there is evidence of variability by individual race/ethnicity in such effects. MethodsUsing data from Wave 1 (1994/5) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), we categorized the sample's 52 middle schools and 80 high schools as majority (>50%) non-Hispanic white, majority non-Hispanic black, or neither. We used two-level hierarchical modeling to explore associations between individual- and school-level race at Wave 1 and lifetime prescription painkiller misuse reported at Wave 4. We included a cross-level interaction between individual race and school racial composition to assess variability in school-level associations by race. ResultsOverall crude prevalence of lifetime NMUPP in majority white schools (17.9%) was over three times that of prevalence in majority black schools (4.8%), and also higher than prevalence in schools neither predominantly black nor predominantly white (12.4%). Lifetime misuse among blacks in majority white schools was more prevalent (5.2%) than among blacks in black schools (2.8%), as was misuse among whites in white schools (19.3%) compared to their white peers in black schools (15.7%). Two-level random intercept Poisson regression results suggest that attendance in a majority black secondary school lowered a participant's risk of lifetime NMUPP (compared to attending a majority white school: RR=0.66, p = 0.03). Compared to blacks in black schools, blacks in white schools had twice the risk of prescription painkiller misuse (p = 0.004) over a decade later, and whites in white schools had 5.5 times the risk (p = 0.01). The risk ratio comparing whites in black schools to whites in white schools was not significant (RR: 1.30; p = 0.37). ConclusionsWe found evidence of an effect of school racial composition on the risk of misusing prescription painkillers over a decade later, over and above individual race, with higher risk of misuse reported among participants who had attended white schools. Black participants who had attended predominantly white schools were, on average, twice as likely to report lifetime misuse of prescription painkillers compared to blacks who had attended black schools.

Pubertal timing, racial identity, neighborhood, and school context among Black adolescent females.

This study bridges the empirical research on pubertal timing effects, racial identity, and school and neighborhood context to understand the pubertal development and depression link among Black adolescent females. We examined whether racial identity content dimensions moderated the relation between pubertal timing and depressive symptoms among Black adolescent females and the moderating capacity of school and neighborhood racial composition. We administered measures of pubertal development, racial identity, and depressive symptoms to a sample of 217 Black adolescent females, aged 14 to 18. We assessed racial centrality, private regard, and public regard and used archival data to obtain the racial composition of participants' neighborhoods and schools. The results indicated that high racial centrality levels were linked to depressive symptoms for adolescent girls with late pubertal timing relative to their early counterparts, which was stronger for girls attending not majority Black schools. The results also indicated that low public regard levels were linked to depressive symptoms among adolescent girls with early pubertal timing relative to their late counterparts, which was stronger for girls attending not majority Black schools. The current study provides evidence that racial identity and school racial context moderate the effects of pubertal timing differentially for early and late maturing Black girls. The results support the notion that the psychological effects of pubertal timing on internalizing symptoms are context dependent. (PsycINFO Database Record

Police shootings, civic unrest and student achievement: evidence from Ferguson

We document externalities of the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager and the resultant civic unrest experienced in Ferguson, MO. Difference-in-differences estimates compare Ferguson-area schools to neighboring schools in the greater St. Louis area and find that the unrest led to statistically significant, arguably causal declines in elementary school students’ math and reading achievement. Attendance is one mechanism through which this effect operated, as chronic absence increased by 5% in Ferguson-area schools. Impacts were concentrated in the bottom of the achievement distribution and spilled over into majority black schools throughout the greater St. Louis area.

Racial Composition of School District on School Leaders′ Responses to State Takeover: A Field Experiment on the Application of Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law

Abstract Michigan’s Public Act 436, commonly referred to as the Emergency Manager Law, has provided for state installed emergency managers to oversee financially distressed municipalities as well as school districts. Given that a number of Michigan school districts, suburban, rural, and urban, have been operating at a deficit for several years and yet only the financial status of majority Black school districts (Detroit, Highland Park, Muskegon Heights) have triggered this takeover law, this field experiment investigated the effect of school district’s racial composition on both the level of support for state-installed emergency managers in districts and the level of support for politically material resistance to the application of that remedy. Implications regarding policy and critical policy research are forwarded in light of the results.

Black Masculinities Expressed Through, and Constrained by, Brotherhood

Black males face pressures to adopt dominant social roles in relationships based on expectations from family, peers, and teachers. Many stereotypes define their perceived masculinities in coeducational schools, such as different definitions of masculinity received from peers and adults. Enrollment in all-male, majority-Black schools changes nothing. This article discusses how Black males who attend the Pebbles School—an urban all-male public combined middle and high school—constructed, perceived, and negotiated their masculine identities and perceptions of brotherhood. The relationship between masculinity and brotherhood and the intersection of gender and ethnic studies draw upon studies in Progressive Black Masculinity to challenge restrictive definitions of masculinity constructions shared among some Black males, who tend to view masculinity exclusively through a heterosexual lens, which limits discussions of diversity in brotherhood and sexual orientation.

Social Justice for the Advantaged: Freedom from Racial Equality Post-Milliken

Background/ContextIn Milliken v. Bradley (1974), the U.S. Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional a metropolitan-wide desegregation plan in Detroit that sought to achieve racial balance in part by busing white suburban students to the city's majority black schools. In a stark departure from Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), Milliken left the question of how, or even whether, to equalize education for black students up to local parents, educators, activists, school board members, state legislators, and other private and public community stakeholders.Purpose/Objective/Focus of StudyIn this article, I consider school desegregation as a form of social justice for blacks and racial equality for all, 40 years post-Milliken. Drawing from research on school desegregation as social justice and Bell's theory of interest convergence, I argue that integration and equality in the post-Civil Rights Era requires attention to the competing visions of social justice I describe as black equality and white freedom.Research DesignFramed by distributional and relational dimensions of social justice and Bell's theory of interest convergence, this paper presents a conceptual analysis of school desegregation as social justice post-Milliken.Conclusions/RecommendationsThe competing interests of black equality and white freedom central to Milliken remain fundamental to the question of school desegregation 40 years later. In light of growing political and public support for local control, school choice, and neighborhood schools, I conclude by discussing the implications of local control for black students and racial equality within the current context of widening economic equality, political polarization, and racial isolation in the United States and the world.

Short-Run Externalities of Civic Unrest: Evidence from Ferguson, Missouri

We document externalities of the civic unrest experienced in Ferguson, MO following the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager. Difference-in-differences and synthetic control method estimates compare Ferguson-area schools to neighboring schools in the greater St. Louis area and find that the unrest led to statistically significant, arguably causal declines in students' math and reading achievement. Attendance is one mechanism through which this effect operated, as chronic absence increased by five percent in Ferguson-area schools. Impacts were concentrated in elementary schools and at the bottom of the achievement distribution and spilled over into majority black schools throughout the area.

The Development of In-Group Pride in Black Canadians

Age differences in attitudes of kindergarten and third-grade Black children from a majority-Black school in a Canadian city toward Blacks, Whites, and Amerindians, were examined on both the single-response Preschool Racial Attitudes Measure (PRAM) and a new multiple-response measure. On both measures, third graders were more pro-Black than kindergartners. Pro-Black biases were much stronger on the multiple-response measure. Despite this general finding, there was a great deal of heterogeneity in racial preferences. Self-identification scores indicated little confusion about racial labels even in preschoolers. Pro-Black biases were stronger in children with higher Black self-identification and racial constancy. Perception of racial differences increased with age, but reconciliation of these differences also increased. Conservation and reconciliation were not associated with racial attitudes. However, constancy and perceptions of within- and between-race differences were. Strongly biased attitudes toward either Whites or Blacks were associated with perceptions of greater between-race differences, whereas attitudes toward Amerindians were associated with self-identification, constancy, and perceptions of within-race differences. Advantages of the new multiple-response measure of attitudes were discussed.

Views of Black School Superintendents on School Desegregation

The concept of racial balance has been the most prominent feature of school desegregation strategies since the Brown decision in 1954.1 Many proponents of school desegregation believe that the dissolving or restructuring of predominantly black school systems, particularly in the urban centers, is the principal challenge confronting school desegregation in the 1980s. But there is increasing support among school desegregationists for making Brown a vehicle for providing effective schooling in mainly black school systems. The nation's approximately sixty black school superintendents are located primarily in predominantly black school systems. For many black superintendents, their success in improving the educational lot of black students may well depend on their effectiveness in relating the mandates and promises of Brown to the particular cultural and educational circumstances inherent in majority black school systems. The views of black superintendents on school desegregation constitute a valuable resource for courts, attorneys, and school boards in their determination of the permissible and effective policies of school desegregation. A questionnaire was prepared by the author and mailed to sixty black superintendents to solicit their responses to forty-eight statements pertinent to school desegregation, the education of black students, and the role of the black superintendent. Thirty-five

White Children In A Majority Black School: Together Yet Separate

White Children In A Majority Black School: Together Yet Separate