Racial Segregation In Schools Research Articles

EARLY-LIFE CIRCUMSTANCES AND RACIAL DISPARITIES IN COGNITION AMONG US OLDER ADULTS

Abstract There are marked racial disparities in cognitive outcomes between non-Hispanic Black (Black) and non-Hispanic White (White) older adults in the US. Existing studies concentrate on exploring mid-life to late-life risk factors, yet the early-life circumstances through which the racial gaps may arise remain under-explored. Using a wide spectrum of early-life factors assembled from the Health and Retirement Study, including demographics, SES, health, trauma, family relationships, and genetics, we investigated how racial gaps in cognitive score and cognitive impairment among older Americans were tied to racial differences in early-life circumstances. 9,015 (7,381 White, 1,634 Black) Americans aged 50 and older were included in the analysis. Using Blinder-Oaxaca-Decomposition, we showed that Black participants generally had less favorable early-life circumstances than White participants, especially in early-life residence, education level, quality and experience. We demonstrated that overall, differences in early-life circumstances explained up to 61.9% of the racial gaps in cognitive score, and 80.9% of the racial gaps in cognitive impairment between White and Black participants. Disentangling racial gaps by individual factors, we found that differences in the level and quality of education contributed the most. Years of education and school racial segregation respectively accounted for 22.7-24.8% and 26.0%-42.8% of the gaps in cognitive outcomes. Early-life educational experience and place of birth/residence additionally contributed to the disparities. However, childhood trauma, health, and genetic factors were not significant contributors. These findings suggest that exposure to less favorable early-life circumstances is associated with clinically meaningful and statistically significant racial gaps in cognition, which warrants targeted interventions.

Testing mediating pathways between school segregation and health: Evidence on peer prejudice and health behaviors

School racial segregation is increasingly recognized as a threat to US public health: rising segregation in recent decades has been linked to a range of poor health outcomes for Black Americans. Key theorized mediators of these harms remain underexamined, including experiences of interpersonal and institutional racism driving increased stress, and peers' health behaviors influencing students' own. Using cross-sectional survey data on a national sample of adolescents, we investigated associations between school segregation and these two potential mediating pathways, operationalized as adolescents’ perceptions of prejudice from fellow students and the health behaviors of their peers (drinking and smoking). We further investigated whether associations were modified by individual race/ethnicity and school racial composition.Pooling across all schools and students, higher levels of school segregation were associated with decreased perceptions of peer prejudice (OR 0.54, 95% CI = 0.34–0.86), but not with peers' health behaviors. However, this masked important differences by respondents' race/ethnicity and school racial/ethnic composition. In predominantly White schools, school segregation was not associated with Black students' perceptions of peers' prejudice, but higher levels of segregation were associated with increased rates of peers' drinking and smoking. In predominantly non-White schools, in contrast—where most Black students are educated—higher levels of school segregation were not associated with perceived peer prejudice nor unhealthier peer behaviors for Black students (in fact, peers’ health behaviors improved). And across both school types, higher levels of district segregation were associated with lower odds of reporting peer prejudice among non-Black students of color.Our findings suggest that the paths between school segregation and poor health depend on the type of school children attend in segregated districts. In schools predominantly serving students of color, structural factors upheld by school segregation—i.e., material, educational, disciplinary, or economic disadvantage—likely dominate over peer behaviors as the primary drivers of segregation's health harms.

Unmasking racial avoidance: Experimental evidence on parental school choice and public health policies during the Covid-19 pandemic

BackgroundCOVID-19 drastically changed the school choice landscape as families considered schools with varying public health protocols as well as academic and demographic characteristics. Our understanding of families’ preferences during the pandemic is limited, however, because it primarily derives from surveys asking parents about a single school characteristic. ObjectiveWe aimed to understand how families' preferences for schools’ racial composition and public health policies may interdepend. MethodsWe conducted an original school choice survey experiment with U.S. White parents in August 2021. Parents indicated their willingness to enroll their student in hypothetical schools with experimentally randomized school quality ratings, racial and socioeconomic demographics, and COVID mitigation strategies (i.e. instructional modalities, mask and vaccination mandates). ResultsWe find novel causal evidence that White parents' preferences for schools’ racial demographics and public health policies are interdependent. Among otherwise similar schools, parents expressed stronger preferences to avoid Black, Latinx, and Asian schools when there were fewer COVID mitigation policies. Relatedly, parents required more stringent COVID protocols for their children to attend predominantly Black, Latinx, and Asian schools while showing no preferences for COVID policies among predominantly White schools. The interdependence of preferred racial demographics and public health polices was amplified among White parents who held stigmatizing beliefs about Asian populations carrying the COVID virus and pro-White sentiments. Although Democrats expressed stronger preferences for schools with more COVID mitigation strategies than Republicans, for White parents across the political spectrum school racial composition and COVID mitigation preferences interdepended. ConclusionsThis study suggests families may leverage flexible student assignment policies and schools of choice to enroll in or avoid schools based on both preferred public health policies and racial demographics. Districts should consider how adopting strong public health policies during infectious disease outbreaks may help mitigate hardened racial avoidance and school racial segregation.

Computing decomposable multigroup indices of segregation

Eight multigroup segregation indices are decomposable into a between and a within term. They are two versions of 1) the mutual information index, 2) the symmetric Atkinson index, 3) the relative diversity index, and 4) Theil’s H index. In this article, we present the command dseg, which obtains all of them. It contributes to the stock of segregation commands in Stata by 1) implementing the decomposition in a single call, 2) providing the weights and local indices used in the computation of the within term, 3) facilitating the deployment of the decomposability properties of the eight indices in complex scenarios that demand tailor-made solutions, and 4) leveraging sample data with bootstrapping and approximate randomization tests. We analyze 2017 census data of public schools in the United States to illustrate the use of dseg. The subject topic is school racial segregation.

School racial segregation and long-term cardiovascular health among Black adults in the US: A quasi-experimental study.

BackgroundCardiovascular disease (CVD) disproportionately affects Black adults in the United States. This is increasingly acknowledged to be due to inequitable distribution of health-promoting resources. One potential contributor is inequities in educational opportunities, although it is unclear what aspects of education are most salient. School racial segregation may affect cardiovascular health by increasing stress, constraining socioeconomic opportunities, and altering health behaviors. We investigated the association between school segregation and Black adults’ CVD risk.Methods and findingsWe leveraged a natural experiment created by quasi-random (i.e., arbitrary) timing of local court decisions since 1991 that released school districts from court-ordered desegregation. We used the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) (1991 to 2017), linked with district-level school segregation measures and desegregation court order status. The sample included 1,053 Black participants who ever resided in school districts that were under a court desegregation order in 1991. The exposure was mean school segregation during observed schooling years. Outcomes included several adult CVD risk factors and outcomes. We fitted standard ordinary least squares (OLS) multivariable linear regression models, then conducted instrumental variables (IV) analysis, using the proportion of schooling years spent in districts that had been released from court-ordered desegregation as an instrument. We adjusted for individual- and district-level preexposure confounders, birth year, and state fixed effects. In standard linear models, school segregation was associated with a lower probability of good self-rated health (−0.05 percentage points per SD of the segregation index; 95% CI: −0.08, −0.03; p < 0.001) and a higher probability of binge drinking (0.04 percentage points; 95% CI: 0.002, 0.07; p = 0.04) and heart disease (0.01 percentage points; 95% CI: 0.002, 0.15; p = 0.007). IV analyses also found that school segregation was associated with a lower probability of good self-rated health (−0.09 percentage points; 95% CI: −0.17, −0.02, p = 0.02) and a higher probability of binge drinking (0.17 percentage points; 95% CI: 0.04, 0.30, p = 0.008). For IV estimates, only binge drinking was robust to adjustments for multiple hypothesis testing. Limitations included self-reported outcomes and potential residual confounding and exposure misclassification.ConclusionsSchool segregation exposure in childhood may have longstanding impacts on Black adults’ cardiovascular health. Future research should replicate these analyses in larger samples and explore potential mechanisms. Given the recent rise in school segregation, this study has implications for policies and programs to address racial inequities in CVD.

School Racial Segregation and the Health of Black Children.

Few researchers have evaluated whether school racial segregation, a key manifestation of structural racism, affects child health, despite its potential impacts on school quality, social networks, and stress from discrimination. We investigated whether school racial segregation affects Black children's health and health behaviors. We estimated the association of school segregation with child health, leveraging a natural experiment in which school districts in recent years experienced increased school segregation. School segregation was operationalized as the Black-White dissimilarity index. We used ordinary least squares models as well as quasi-experimental instrumental variables analysis, which can reduce bias from unobserved confounders. Data from the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1997-2014, n = 1248 Black children) were linked with district-level school segregation measures. Multivariable regressions were adjusted for individual-, neighborhood-, and district-level covariates. We also performed subgroup analyses by child sex and age. In instrumental variables models, a one standard deviation increase in school segregation was associated with increased behavioral problems (2.53 points on a 27-point scale; 95% CI, 0.26 to 4.80), probability of having ever drunk alcohol (0.23; 95% CI, 0.049 to 0.42), and drinking at least monthly (0.20; 95% CI, 0.053 to 0.35). School segregation was more strongly associated with drinking behaviors among girls. School segregation was associated with worse outcomes on several measures of well-being among Black children, which may contribute to health inequities across the life span. These results highlight the need to promote school racial integration and support Black youth attending segregated schools.

Challenging the stereotype that minority segregated schools are unsafe: are crime and violence really more prevalent in segregated minority high schools?

ABSTRACT There is a longstanding stereotype that segregated high schools serving a large majority of minority students are unsafe. But it is unclear if this stereotype has any merit. I use a QuantCrit theoretical framework along with data from the nationally representative Education Longitudinal Study and multilevel logistic regression models to explore how school racial segregation is related to student reports of victimization in high school, as well as student reports of peer disruptive behavior. Results indicate that attending a segregated minority high school is not related to increased chances of victimization, but students who attend such schools face a more disrupted learning environment.

Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever? Racial and Economic Isolation and Dissimilarity in Rural Black Belt Schools in Alabama*

AbstractSchool racial and economic segregation trends in the United States have increased since the high point of school integration in the 1980s. Current scholarship rarely examines segregation trends in rural areas, especially in the rural Black Belt region of the southern United States. The Black Belt was the location of the leading events of the Civil Rights Movement and where white residents exhibited overt and violent resistance to Brown v. Board of Education. This landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case prohibited legally mandated racial segregation in schools. Our study examines patterns of racial and economic isolation and dissimilarity in the Alabama Black Belt to determine the contemporary nature of school and neighborhood segregation in the region. We use a Critical Race Spatial Analysis framework to conceptualize the study, and we show that segregation patterns have continued and, in some cases, worsened in the last three decades. The forces driving these patterns are different from in the past, stemming from student population changes rather than students' distribution within school districts. Based on these findings, we explain solutions that include implementing school enrollment policy changes alongside policies that incentivize population growth and economic development.

Who’s Afraid of Bob Jones?: “Fundamental National Public Policy” and Critical Race Theory in a Delicate Democracy

In Summer of 2021, Republican legislators across the United States introduced a host of bills to prohibit government funding for schools or agencies that teach critical race theory (“CRT”), described by the American Association of Law Schools not as a single doctrine but a set of “frameworks” to “explain and illustrate how structural racism produces racial inequity within our social, economic, political, legal, and educational systems[,] even absent individual racist intent.” Characterizing such an explicitly race-conscious analysis of legal and social institutions as “divisive,” opponents of CRT, such as former Vice President Mike Pence, labeled it “nothing short of state-sponsored and state-sanctioned racism.” The political campaign to “Stop CRT,” as articulated by strategist Christopher Rufo, seeks to redirect the time-honored civil-rights strategy of defunding racially discriminatory social institutions for use against race-conscious efforts to remedy the ongoing disparate racial, economic, and other social effects perpetuated by the same institutions. The movement to Stop CRT thus seeks to freeze civil rights progress where it stood decades ago, as when the Supreme Court acknowledged a “fundamental national public policy” against racial segregation in its 1983 decision in the notorious case of Bob Jones University v. United States, while leaving unresolved vital questions about whether and how to allocate public resources affirmatively to foster diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in democratic society. In Bob Jones, the Court upheld the federal taxation of private schools that excluded Black students because their religious beliefs allegedly mandated “racial separation.” Specifically, the Court ruled that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) properly withheld federal tax-exempt status to otherwise qualifying entities to enforce “fundamental national public policy” (“FNPP”), as expressed by all three branches of the federal government, against racial segregation in schools, and deemed desegregation a compelling government interest that outweighed any burden on religion. As a private tax dispute, Bob Jones stands alongside legions of other complaints brought by taxpayers aggrieved by IRS actions. But as a case involving an educational institution raising a religious liberty claim against antidiscrimination regulation, Bob Jones raised broader public law issues involving constitutional and federal statutory interpretation, as well as judicial review of administrative action. This article assesses the legal and symbolic influence of Bob Jones not to relitigate the case or to rewrite history, but to highlight the case’s lasting symbolic impact and lessons for future civil rights advocacy, especially as informed by CRTs that developed alongside the federal courts’ retreat from enforcing existing antidiscrimination norms. Part I examines the case of Bob Jones to show how its political and legal context shaped its unique posture and path to the Supreme Court. Part II examines the afterlife of Bob Jones and its symbolic importance to conservatives motivated to prevent its expansion, even as the decision limits its own impact by leaving crucial substantive questions unresolved: namely, the role of pluralism in enforcing civil rights against First Amendment claims, the viability of race-conscious remedies for racial discrimination, and the visibility of redistributive economic justice concerns. Finally, Part III shows how CRT’s insistence on confronting those same questions reveals persistent inequities sustained by U.S. social and legal institutions, drawing the fire of efforts to Stop CRT. Part III assesses the prospects for moving the difficult questions left unresolved in Bob Jones back to the center of analysis, even with the current Supreme Court in a polarized and partisan political climate. The Article ultimately concludes that the legal reorientation demanded by Bob Jones and initiated by critical theorists, whatever their fate in the Court’s jurisprudence in the near term, remains crucial for identifying and challenging ongoing power disparities in and through every level of democratic government and society.

Does School Desegregation Promote Diverse Interactions? An Equilibrium Model of Segregation within Schools

This paper studies racial segregation in schools using data on student friendships from Add Health. I estimate an equilibrium model of friendship formation, with preferences allowing both homophily and heterophily in direct and indirect ties. I find that homophily goes beyond direct links: students also prefer racially homogeneous indirect friends, while there is heterophily in income. I simulate policies reallocating students across schools. Race-based policies have nonlinear effects on within-school segregation and other network features such as clustering and centrality. Policies increasing diversity through reallocations based on income have less impact on racial segregation. (JEL H75, I21, I28, J15)

At the Margins of Canada: School Choice Practices of Aboriginal Families in a Settler-Colonial City

Little is known about the school choice practices of Aboriginal families in settler-colonial societies, where they have been removed from their ancestral lands and/or have been subjected to discriminatory educational policies. Through the lens of settler-colonial theory, this study elucidates the spatially positioned school choice practices of Aboriginal families in a Canadian city. It explores their desires to choose schools and identifies their sociospatial constraints that result from historical marginalization and racism. It delineates how racial segregation in schools increased, as Aboriginal families’ school choice has been limited primarily to low-income, racialized parts of the city that face school closure due to low enrollment. In addition, this article analyzes the exclusion of Aboriginal students from prestigious schools-of-choice programs in the public education system. The study concludes that the neoliberal policy of school choice offers limited options to Aboriginal families, especially given the settler-colonial context of the city where they reside.

The impact of the school choice policy on student sorting: evidence from Seoul, South Korea

ABSTRACT This article examines the impact of a high school choice policy in Seoul, South Korea on school segregation by student performance levels. Seoul replaced random assignment of high schools with school choice in 2010. By exploiting the policy change, this article examines the effect of the school choice policy on student sorting by ability. Using rich administrative data, this article compares school segregation prior to and following the implementation of the high school choice policy in Seoul. We find that schools became segregated by student performance levels after the implementation of the school choice policy. Because of the high degree of racial and ethnic homogeneity of South Korea, the results of this article suggest that school choice increases school academic segregation independently from school racial segregation.

Charters and Choice: The New White Flight

White charter school enclaves — defined as charter schools located in school districts that are thirty percent or less white, but that enroll a student body that is fifty percent or greater white — are emerging across the country. The emergence of white charter school enclaves is the result of a sobering but ugly truth: when given a choice, white parents as a collective tend to choose racially segregated, predominately white schools. Empirical research supports this claim. Empirical research also demonstrates that white parents as a collective will make that choice even when presented with the option of a more racially diverse school that is of good academic quality. Despite the connection between collective white parental choice and school segregation, greater choice continues to be injected into the school assignment process. School choice assignment policies, particularly charter schools, are proliferating at a substantial rate. As a result, parental choice rather than systemic design is creating new patterns of racial segregation and inequality in public schools. Yet the Supreme Court’s school desegregation jurisprudence insulates from legal scrutiny racial segregation in schools ostensibly caused by parental choice rather than systemic design. Consequently, the new patterns of racial segregation in public schools caused by collective white parental choice are largely escaping regulation by courts. This article argues that the time has come to reconsider the legal and normative viability of regulating racial segregation in public schools caused by collective white parental choice. The article makes two important contributions to the legal literature on school desegregation. First, using white charter school enclaves as an example, it documents the ways in which school choice policies are being used to allow whites as a collective to satisfy their preference for segregated predominately white schools. Second, the article sets forth both constitutional and normative arguments for regulating the private choices that result in stark racial segregation patterns in public schools.

School segregation: A realist’s view

The nation’s greatest anti-racist education policy — school desegregation — has proven no match for the adaptations of institutionalized racism. Over the last 40 years, school segregation has evolved and reemerged in housing patterns, school zoning policy, and curricular tracking. This has led to calls for new solutions to the problem of racial segregation in schools. Is it possible, however, that the pursuit of such solutions is a form of avoidance, an unwillingness to face the intractable nature of institutionalized racism? Jerry Rosiek considers the power of pessimism about racial justice as a stance for educators in an era of resegregating schools.

The association between the end of court-ordered school desegregation and preterm births among Black women.

Racial segregation, and in particular school segregation, likely plays an important role in affecting health outcomes. To examine this connection, this paper explores the relationship between the end of court-ordered school desegregation and preterm births among Blacks using birth certificate information between 1992 and 2002 (n = 183,178). The end of court-ordered oversight has important implications for the level of racial segregation in schools: If residential segregation remains high, neighborhood-based student assignment plans would naturally increase school segregation. A rise in school segregation may lead to worse educational, labor, and health outcomes among Blacks. Using multiple difference-in-differences framework that exploits variation in exposure to schools that declared unitary status, it finds that school districts’ release from court oversight is associated with a 0.8 percentage point increase in preterm births among Black mothers. This paper contributes to literature that finds that the end of court-ordered school desegregation in the 1990s have negative implications for Blacks. More research should be conducted to understand the causal relationship between school segregation and infant health.

Nomos e narração

O artigo seminal de Robert Cover, Nomos e narração, serviu de inspiração para gerações de juristas norte-americanos. Cover trabalha nesse texto as implicações entre normatividade e narratividade, tentando explicar o papel da violência praticada pelos juízes no desempenho de suas funções. Através de fontes bíblicas e da história social e jurídica do judaísmo, são analisadas as atuações dos tribunais diante do que Cover denomina “universos normativos” distintos daqueles das instituições oficiais. Toda essa intrincada construção teórica tem como finalidade estudar a fundo o que o autor julgou ser a mais importante decisão da Suprema Corte do ano de 1982, relativa ao caso Bob Jones University, que trata do desmantelamento estatal da segregação racial em escolas e universidades, num contexto de forte resistência religiosa por parte de determinadas comunidades. (Resumo elaborado pelo tradutor)

Segregation in Social Networks: A Structural Approach

This paper studies racial segregation in schools using data from Add Health. I estimate a structural equilibrium model of friendship formation among students. Preferences depend on direct connections, but also indirect friendships and popularity. I find that students tend to interact with similar people. Homophily goes beyond direct links: students also prefer a racially homogeneous set of indirect friends. I simulate several counterfactual desegregation busing programs, showing that policies that transport minorities to other schools have nonlinear effects on within-school segregation and welfare. In some instances, these interventions increase segregation within schools.

Do Irregularly Shaped School Attendance Zones Contribute to Racial Segregation or Integration?

This research investigates if and how much the shapes of school attendance zones contribute to racial segregation in schools. We find that the typical school attendance zone is relatively compact and resembles a square-like shape. Compact zones typically draw children from local residential areas, and since local areas are often racially homogeneous, this suggests that high levels of racial segregation in the largest school districts are largely structured by existing residential segregation. Still, this study finds that the United States contains some attendance zones with highly irregular shapes-some of which are as irregular as the most irregular Congressional District. Although relatively rare, attendance zones that are highly irregular in shape almost always contain racially diverse student populations. This racial diversity contributes to racial integration within school districts. These findings contradict recent theoretical and empirical scholarship arguing that irregularly shaped zones contribute to racial segregation in schools. Our findings suggest that most racial segregation in school attendance zones is driven by large-scale segregation across residential areas rather than a widespread practice among school districts to exacerbate racial segregation by delineating irregularly shaped attendance zones.

School Segregation in the Era of Accountability

Although a great deal of research has examined the impact of accountability on a number of different outcomes, particularly achievement, little research to date has assessed the impact of school accountability reform on racial segregation in schools. Using school, district, and state-level data from the Common Core of Data from 1987 to 2010 and data on school accountability from other sources, we examine black-white within-district segregation before and after the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002. We find that NCLB was associated with significant increases in black-white segregation within school districts, even after controlling for other factors that might have led to increased segregation (e.g., release from court-ordered segregation, recent Supreme Court decisions). This effect was especially pronounced among districts in states that had implemented school accountability policies prior to NCLB. Our results lead us to conclude that policymakers must also consider the negative unintended consequences of education reform policies, even those designed to have an ameliorative impact on inequality.

Constitutionalizing Property-Owning Democracy

Constitutionalizing Property-Owning Democracy