School Racial Composition Research Articles

Racial Disparities in Context: Student-, School-, and County-Level Effects on the Likelihood of Obesity among Elementary School Students

Childhood obesity rates in the United States have risen since the 1980s and are especially high among racial minorities. Researchers document differentials in obesity rates by race, socioeconomic status, school characteristics, and place. In this study, the authors examine the impact of race on the likelihood of obesity at the student, school, and county levels and the interactions between student race and school racial composition. The data are from 74,661 third to fifth grade students in 317 schools in 38 North Carolina counties. Multilevel logistic regression models showed that racial differences in the likelihood of obesity persisted even when racial composition and socioeconomic disadvantage at the school level were controlled. The differences between white and nonwhite students slightly decreased once school-level measures were added. The magnitude of the effects of student-level race on the relative odds of obesity varied according to the racial composition of the school. These student- and school-level results held even when county-level race and socioeconomic variables were controlled. The results show that contextual factors at the school and county levels are important social determinants of racial disparities in the likelihood of childhood obesity.

Minority threat and school security: Assessing the impact of Black and Hispanic student representation on school security measures

The use of security measures has drastically increased in the hallways of US schools over the past three decades. Although previous studies have assessed the impact of school security measures on student outcomes, little attention has been given to understanding what factors lead schools to adopt such measures. Using the Educational Longitudinal Study data and guided by minority threat hypotheses, the current research assesses the impact of school racial composition on the use of security measures. Findings indicate the size of the Black student population is related to schools utilizing metal detectors, security guards, surveillance cameras, required ‘check-in’ areas and fencing around the entire school, while a null effect was found between Hispanic student representation and the majority of security measures. On the other hand, both Black and Hispanic student representation significantly related to the overall number of security measures utilized within schools. The differential impact of race and ethnicity is addressed.

Exploring school choice and the consequences for student racial segregation within Pennsylvania’s charter school transfers

Using individual-level student data from Pennsylvania, this study explores the extent to which charter school racial composition may be an important factor in students’ self-segregative school choices. Findings indicate that, holding distance and enrollment constant, Black and Latino students are strongly averse to moving to charter schools with higher percentages of White students. Conversely, White students are more likely to enroll in such charter schools. As the percentage and number of students transferring into charter schools increases, self-segregative school choices raise critical questions regarding educational equity, and the effects of educational reform and school choice policies on the fostering of racially diverse educational environments.

School Context Matters: The Impacts of Concentrated Poverty and Racial Segregation on Childhood Obesity.

Schools are important sites for interventions to prevent childhood obesity. This study examines how variables measuring the socioeconomic and racial composition of schools and counties affect the likelihood of obesity among third to fifth grade children. Body mass index data were collected from third to fifth grade public school students by teachers from 317 urban and rural North Carolina schools in 38 counties. Multilevel models are used to examine county-, school-, and individual-level effects. Low concentrations of poverty at the school level are associated with lower odds of obesity. Schools in rural counties had significantly higher rates of obesity, net the other variables in the model. Students in minority-segregated schools had higher rates of obesity than those in more racially diverse schools, but the effect was not statistically significant once school-level poverty was controlled. Place-based inequalities are important determinants of health inequalities. The results of this study show that school-level variables related to poverty are important for understanding and confronting childhood obesity.

Homogeneity and Inequality: School Discipline Inequality and the Role of Racial Composition

Research consistently demonstrates that black students are disproportionately subject to behavioral sanctions, yet little is known about contextual variation. This paper explores the relationship between school racial composition and racial inequality in discipline. Prior work suggests that demographic composition predicts harsh punishment of minorities. Accordingly, a threat framework suggests that increases in black student enrollment correspond to increases in punitive school policies. Results from this paper find some support for this hypothesis, finding that the percent of black students in a school is related to increased odds of suspension/expulsion, and differential effects of behavior partially mediate these relationships. However, I also find that a traditional threat narrative may be insufficient. Black students may be most likely to experience unequal sanctions on their behavior in racially homogeneous contexts—whether homogeneously black or white. These results suggest that more research is needed to understand how the social organization of schools contributes to discipline inequality.

School Substance Use Norms and Racial Composition Moderate Parental and Peer Influences on Adolescent Substance Use.

Parental and peer influences on adolescent substance use have been well demonstrated. However, limited research has examined how parental and peer influences vary across school contexts. This study used a multilevel approach to examine the effects of school substance use norms and school racial composition in predicting adolescent substance use (a composite measure of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use) and in moderating parental and peer influences on adolescent substance use. A total of 14,346 adolescents from 34 schools in a mid-western county completed surveys electronically at school. Analyses were conducted using hierarchical linear modeling. Results indicated that school-level disapproval against substance use and percentage of minority students at school were negatively associated with adolescent substance use. School-level disapproval moderated the association between peer substance use and adolescent substance use, with the association being stronger when school-level disapproval was lower. School racial composition moderated the influence of parental disapproval and peer substance use on adolescent substance use. Specifically, both the association between parental disapproval and adolescent substance use and the association between peer substance use and adolescent substance use were weaker for adolescents who attended schools with higher percentages of minority students. Findings highlighted the importance of considering the role of school contexts, in conjunction with parental and peer influences, in understanding adolescent substance use.

School Racial Composition and Parental Choice

Racial segregation remains a persistent problem in U.S. schools. In this article, we examine how social psychological factors—in particular, individuals’ perceptions of schools with varying demographic characteristics—may contribute to the ongoing structural problem of school segregation. We investigate the effects of school racial composition and several nonracial school characteristics on white parents’ school enrollment decisions for their children as well as how racial stereotypes shape the school choice process. We use data from a survey-based experiment we designed to test ‘‘pure race’’ and ‘‘racial proxy’’ hypotheses regarding parents’ enrollment preferences. We also use a measure of pro-white stereotype bias, both alone and in combination with school racial composition (percentage black). Using logistic regression analysis, we find support for the ‘‘pure race’’ hypothesis. The proportion of black students in a hypothetical school has a consistent and significant inverse association with the likelihood of white parents enrolling their children in that school net of the effects of the included racial proxy measures. In addition, higher levels of pro-white stereotype bias further inhibit enrollment, particularly in schools with higher proportions of black students. We discuss the implications of this research for policies aimed at mitigating racial segregation in U.S. schools.

Does Racial Isolation in School Lead to Long-Term Disadvantages? Labor Market Consequences of High School Racial Composition.

School racial composition has modest effects on test score gaps, but evidence of a longer-term impact is scarce. Perpetuation theory suggests that blacks who attend schools with higher proportions of white classmates may have better job outcomes. Multilevel analyses of two national longitudinal surveys reveal no effects of high school racial composition on occupational status, employment, or annual earnings for blacks or whites. For other minority groups, attending schools with more whites impedes occupational advancement. For all groups, however, school racial composition predicts workplace racial composition: Whites who attend high schools with higher proportions of white students have higher proportions of white coworkers, while nonwhites who attend schools with higher proportions of whites have fewer same-race coworkers. The findings are modest in size but robust to alternative specifications, and sensitivity analyses support a causal interpretation for same-race coworkers. These results support perpetuation theory for workplace composition but not for stratification outcomes.

The Cumulative Disadvantages of First- and Second-Generation Segregation for Middle School Achievement

Middle schools are important because they launch students on trajectories that they are likely to follow throughout their formal educations. This study explored the relationship of first-generation segregation (elementary and middle school racial composition) and second-generation segregation (racially correlated academic tracks) to reading and mathematics test scores of Grade 8 students who attended the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) in 1997. At the time the data were collected, the district had been operating under a mandatory desegregation plan since the early 1970s, which it continued to do for another five years. While the majority of students attended desegregated schools for most of their CMS education, a portion of youth also experienced school- and classroom-level segregation. Survey data collected from 1,812 students in randomly selected language arts classes stratified by track from the district’s 24 middle schools were analyzed with multilevel modeling to examine the influence of school and classroom racial composition on standardized scores, controlling for student and family factors associated with school performance. Results indicate that school- and classroom-level racial segregation was negatively related to achievement. Beginning in elementary school, sequential experiences of first- and second-generation segregation likely triggered a cycle of cumulative disadvantage for respondents’ middle school educational outcomes. This article contributes to the literatures on the structural antecedents of school success and failure, the ways that many positive desegregation effects are undermined by tracking, and how first- and second-generation segregation contributes to maintaining the race gap in school outcomes.

Distributive Justice Antecedents of Race and Gender Disparities in First-Year College Performance

Public education is a sphere of society in which distributive justice with respect to the allocation of opportunities to learn can have profound and lasting effects on students’ educational outcomes. We frame our study in the distributive justice literature, and define just outcomes specifically from a meritocratic and strict egalitarian perspectives in order to investigate how assignment to academic tracks and the availability of opportunities to learn during high school are associated with students’ academic achievement during college. We examine the role of “just” placement into high school academic tracks, “just” access to high-quality teachers, and “just” assignment of secondary schools’ resources in high school, in relation to college freshmen’s grade point averages (GPA). We utilize longitudinal data from a unique dataset with over 15,000 students who spent their academic careers in North Carolina public secondary schools and then attended North Carolina public universities. Our results suggest that “unjust” assignment of students to certain high schools, access to high-quality teachers, and assignment to learn in specific academic tracks result in long-lasting consequences that are reflected in freshman college GPA. Importantly, findings also show that the direction and magnitude of the relationship between distributional injustice at schools and college performance is moderated by students’ own gender and race. Race and gender interact with the high schools’ institutional contexts operationalized by tracking practices, teacher quality, and by school racial and socioeconomic composition. Results show that similar settings do not affect all students in the same ways.

The Social Structure of Criminalized and Medicalized School Discipline

In this article, the author examines how school- and district-level racial/ethnic and socioeconomic compositions influence schools’ use of different types of criminalized and medicalized school discipline. Using a large data set containing information on over 60,000 schools in over 6,000 districts, the authors uses multilevel modeling and a group-mean modeling strategy to answer several important questions about school discipline. First, how do school- and district-level racial and ethnic compositions influence criminalized school discipline and medicalization? Second, how do levels of school and district economic disadvantage influence criminalized school discipline and medicalization? Third, how does district-level economic disadvantage moderate the relationship between school racial/ethnic composition and criminalized school discipline and medicalization? The results generally support hypotheses that schools and districts with relatively larger minority and poor populations are more likely to implement criminalized disciplinary policies, including suspensions and expulsion or police referrals or arrests, and less likely to medicalize students through behavioral plans put in place through laws such as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. However, results from cross-level interaction models suggest that district-level economic disadvantage moderates the influence of school racial composition on criminalized school discipline and medicalization.

Testing the Oppositional Culture Explanation in Desegregated Schools: The Impact of Racial Differences in Academic Orientations on School Performance

Recent studies suggest that anti-achievement attitudes and behaviors that are specific to black students occur most commonly in integrated or predominantly white school contexts. Accordingly, this study examines the degree to which racial differences in achievement-related attitudes and behaviors (collectively called academic orientations) actually contribute to corresponding differences in academic performance among nearly 25,000 students attending integrated secondary schools in the United States. The findings suggest that when controlling for socioeconomic status indicators, black students exhibit more pro-academic orientations than their white counterparts. School racial composition did not significantly influence these dynamics, and the racial composition of black students' friend groups showed modest but inconsistent influence on academic orientations. Finally, the authors demonstrate that racial differences in expressed academic orientations have only negligible consequences for student performance, and thus do not show much promise for explaining or remedying black/white achievement disparities in secondary schools.

The persistent effect of race and the promise of alternatives to suspension in school discipline outcomes

Demographic and student discipline data were used to examine the influence of multi-level risk and protective factors on exclusionary school discipline outcomes. Participants included all youth (n=87,997) in grades K to 12 who were enrolled in Denver Public Schools (n=183) in 2011–2012. The dataset included measures of risk and protective factors for exclusionary school discipline outcomes such as race, family poverty, special education status, emotional disability, participation in gifted and talented programs, homelessness, office referral reasons over the course of one school year, participation in in-school suspension, a behavior contract, or restorative approaches, and school composition. Multilevel logistic regression modeling was used to estimate students' likelihood of receiving one or more office disciplinary referrals, suspensions, expulsions, and/or law enforcement referrals. Findings indicate that student racial background and school racial composition are enduring risks across key decision points of the school discipline process. Conversely, participation in restorative interventions and in-school suspensions protects students from out-of-school suspensions. This study suggests that ongoing attention to issues of racial inequity in school discipline outcomes is warranted, and that restorative practices have potential as an inclusive strategy to improve school discipline outcomes without excluding students from the classroom.

A multi-level analysis of school racial composition and ecological correlates of academic success

Current policy and practice interventions have failed to address disparities in academic success by race/ethnicity or socio-economic status. In addition, as policy interventions to prevent racially segregated schools have stalled, progress toward reducing these achievement gaps has also slowed. This exploratory study employs multi-level modeling to examine how risk and protective factors in students' schools, homes, peer groups, and neighborhoods relate to behavior and academic performance. We examine whether these relationships depend on the racial composition of the school and, in particular, the concentration of African American students in schools. The findings indicate that protective school, home, peer group, and neighborhood environments characterized by social support and safety are associated with positive academic outcomes and behavior. Students attending more segregated schools in which the majority of students are African American report worse behavioral and academic outcomes than students in other schools, even when controlling for other important dimensions of the school environment, school climate, school safety, and poverty. In addition, school racial composition shapes how key protective factors relate to grades.

School accountability and the black–white test score gap

Since at least the 1960s, researchers have closely examined the respective roles of families, neighborhoods, and schools in producing the black–white achievement gap. Although many researchers minimize the ability of schools to eliminate achievement gaps, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) increased pressure on schools to do so by 2014. In this study, we examine the effects of NCLB’s subgroup-specific accountability pressure on changes in black–white math and reading test score gaps using a school-level panel dataset on all North Carolina public elementary and middle schools between 2001 and 2009. Using difference-in-difference models with school fixed effects, we find that accountability pressure reduces black–white achievement gaps by raising mean black achievement without harming mean white achievement. We find no differential effects of accountability pressure based on the racial composition of schools, but schools with more affluent populations are the most successful at reducing the black–white math achievement gap. Thus, our findings suggest that school-based interventions have the potential to close test score gaps, but differences in school composition and resources play a significant role in the ability of schools to reduce racial inequality.

Decomposing School Resegregation

Today’s typical minority student attends school with fewer whites than his counterpart in 1970. This apparent resegregation of U.S. schools has sparked outrage and debate. Some blame a rollback of desegregation policies designed to distribute students more evenly among schools; others blame the changing racial composition of the student population. This study clarifies the link between distributive processes of segregation, population change, and school racial composition by framing school segregation as a mode of social closure. I use a novel decomposition approach to determine the relative contributions of distributive processes and compositional change in the apparent resegregation of schools from 1993 to 2010. For the most part, compositional changes are to blame for the declining presence of whites in minorities’ schools. During this period, whites and minorities actually became more evenly distributed across schools, helping increase minority students’ exposure to whites. Further decompositions reveal the continued success of district-level desegregation efforts, but the greatest barrier to progress appears to be the uneven distribution of students between school districts in the same area. These findings call for new research and new policies to address contemporary school segregation.

Student Perceptions of Safety in Perceived Similar and Nonsimilar Race High Schools

Despite the large body of research on neighborhood racial composition and perceptions of safety, only one geographically limited study has investigated the relation between school racial composition and student perceptions of safety. Using data from a 2010 national sample of high school seniors, this study found that being in a mostly-same-race high school predicted student feelings of safety; however, this relation was dependent on the race of the student. Contrary to the power in numbers theory, Black and Hispanic students reported feeling less safe in same-race schools whereas the opposite was true for White students. The racial stereotypes applied to places theory better explained the relation between school racial composition and student perceptions of safety at school.

The Advanced Placement Arms Race and the Reproduction of Educational Inequality

Background Access to Advanced Placement (AP) courses is stratified by class and race. Researchers have identified how schools serving disadvantaged students suffer from various kinds of resource deprivations, concluding that interventions are needed to equalize access to AP courses. On the other hand, the theory of Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI) argues that schools serving advantaged students may perpetuate inequalities by expanding their AP curriculum so their graduates can be competitive in the college admissions process. Research Questions Between 2000 and 2002, California attempted to expand AP offerings and enrollments. This study answers whether or not this intervention narrowed inequalities in AP along class and racial lines. It also examines if community affluence affects district officials’ views of pressures to offer AP courses, which could explain any effectively maintained inequalities in AP access. Research Design This study uses a panel dataset of all California public high schools from 1997 to 2006. It examines the changing effects of school poverty, upper-middle class presence, and school racial composition on offerings of and enrollments in AP subjects. It supplements the quantitative analysis with interviews from 11 school district officials in California conducted in 2006. Results Hierarchical generalized linear models show that upper-middle class presence structures California high schools’ AP subject offerings and enrollments, much more than school poverty. California's intervention resulted in increased AP subject offerings and enrollments in high schools serving disadvantaged and less advantaged students, but these reductions in deprivation had trivial effects on inequalities, since schools serving advantaged students increased their own AP offerings and enrollments. In addition, high schools serving White and Asian students had larger increases in AP offerings and enrollments than high schools serving Black and Hispanic students. Interview data indicate that officials in affluent districts perceived a greater demand for AP subjects, and were more likely to report their school staff was proactive to initiate new AP courses than officials in districts serving working-class communities. Conclusions The findings document that while policies can increase AP access at schools serving low-income students, the actions of affluent schools and families will pose substantial barriers to achieving parity in AP offerings and enrollments. Moreover, studies gauging resource inequalities among schools may underestimate these inequalities if they use school poverty to measure schools’ socioeconomic composition.

Effects of School Racial Composition on K–12 Mathematics Outcomes

Recently published social science research suggests that students attending schools with concentrations of disadvantaged racial minority populations achieve less academic progress than their otherwise comparable counterparts in more racially balanced or integrated schools, but to date no meta-analysis has estimated the effect size of school racial composition on mathematics outcomes. This metaregression analysis reviewed the social science literature published in the past 20 years on the relationship between mathematics outcomes and the racial composition of the K–12 schools students attend. The authors employed a two-level hierarchical linear model to analyze the 25 primary studies with 98 regression effects. Results indicate that school racial isolation has a small statistically significant negative effect on overall building-level mathematics outcomes. This relationship is moderated by the size of the sample in the study and by the way the independent variable was operationalized. Although it is small, the effect size is substantively meaningful. The effects are stronger in secondary compared to elementary grades, and racial gaps widen as students age. The emergence and widening of the race gaps as students move through the grades suggest that the association of racial segregation with mathematics performance compounds over time. Implications for educational policy and future research are discussed.

Restorative Justice in Schools

Schools today are more frequently using punitive discipline practices to control student behavior, despite the greater effectiveness of community-building techniques on compliance that are based on restorative justice principles found in the criminal justice system. Prior research testing the racial threat hypothesis has found that the racial composition of schools is associated with the use of more punitive and less reparative approaches to discipline, just as it has been associated with criminal justice harshness. However, no research to date has assessed the possibility that school-level racial composition may affect the likelihood that specific restorative justice techniques, which are the most commonly used alternative, will be implemented. This study is the first to test the racial threat perspective in relation to use of the restorative practices student conferences, peer mediation, restitution, and community service. Using a national random sample in logistic regression analyses, we find that schools with proportionally more Black students are less likely to use such techniques when responding to student behavior. This finding has several troubling implications for minority students in particular and for education as a whole.