Educational Segregation Research Articles

Framing school choice and merit: news media coverage of an education policy in Chile

ABSTRACT School choice is a controversial issue in the public discussion of education. In Chile, the new School Admission System (SAE) was recently implemented to gradually reverse the country’s high educational segregation. However, this system is facing strong opposition. Voucher and free choice promoters have opposed SAE because they claim it violates the freedom of families and merit. The media have actively participated in this debate, working as political actors. By applying a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative thematic analysis, we study how Chilean media have framed school choice, and discuss the political contention faced by policies that attempt to reverse the primacy of the market in a global context of neoliberal education policies.

Dropouts and transfers: socioeconomic segregation in entrance to and exit from the Chilean higher education

ABSTRACT This study explores the disparate trajectories of students in Chilean higher education and how these alter socioeconomic segregation within this system. The study follows the cohort of students who entered higher education in 2011 for eight years through census-type data. It uses two segregation indexes to make novel comparisons of socioeconomic segregation at the beginning and the end of their passage through higher education. The results show high dropout rates among students of low socioeconomic status, and high mobility between degree programs and institutions across the socioeconomic spectrum, with significant nuances in the type of mobility experienced by different socioeconomic groups. However, dropouts and transfers between degree programs, institutions, and types of institutions do not significantly modify the levels of socioeconomic segregation seven years after entrance. These results indicate that socioeconomic segregation in higher education is set to a large extent upon entrance to this system.

The impact of guidance counselling on gender segregation: Major choice and persistence in higher education. An experimental study.

Gender segregation in higher education is considered one of the main drivers of persistent economic gender inequality. Yet, though there has been considerable research identifying and describing the underlying mechanisms that cause gendered educational choices in higher education, little is known about how gender segregation in higher education could be changed. Accordingly, this article aims to determine the potential of educational interventions during high school to foster gender desegregation in higher education. We focused on two different processes that contribute to gender segregation in majors among higher education graduates: first, the selection into specific majors and, second, the selection out of specific majors. We investigated whether an intensive counselling programme leads to more gender-atypical choices among high-school graduates and examined whether intensive counselling supports several indicators of students' persistence in gender-atypical majors. Based on data from an experimental study of a counselling programme for German high-school students (N = 625), we estimated the programme's effect with linear probability models and intention-to-treat analysis. Our results show that high-school graduates are more likely to choose a gender-atypical major if they have received intensive counselling. This applies more to men than to women. In addition, the programme improved some persistence indicators for students in gender-atypical majors. Although we found a significant programme effect only for perceived person-major fit and student satisfaction, the coefficients of all aspects of students' persistence show a trend indicating that the programme was beneficial for students in gender-atypical majors. As experimental studies can also be affected by various types of bias, we performed several robustness checks. All analyses indicated stable results. In conclusion, we suggest that intensive counselling programmes have the potential to reduce gender segregation in higher education. More students were motivated to choose a gender-atypical major, and different aspects of student persistence were supported by the programme for students in gender-atypical majors.

Gender features of the Kazakhstan labour market in the context of sustainable development

Kazakhstan is demonstrating its commitment to promoting gender equality and working closely with the globalcommunity. Over the past decade, the gender gap in the structure of labour force of Kazakhstan has slightly decreased. However, gender gaps persist. Women in Kazakhstan make up slightly more than half of the total population of the country, but their contribution to indicators of economic activity, growth and well-being of republic is significantly below their potential. In this article, gender dynamics of Kazakhstan labour market are explored at macro and micro levels using GIS. In this article, authors tried to answer the following questions: What is the gender situation in the labour market of Kazakhstan, as a country of Central Asia region with an Eastern mentality? Does the growing number of employed women lead to higher levels of gender equality in the Kazakhstan labour market? What are the characteristics of women’s employment compared to men’s? The results of research show that women’s increased access to jobs has not led to a significant reduction in the gap in earnings and incomes between men and women. This is due to the gender segregation of vocational education, which lays the foundation for sectoral differentiation of employment with different geographical distributions. Also, the so-called “glass ceiling” or low accessibility to leadership positions hinders women’s greater competitiveness. In addition, such an important element of labour market as unpaid domestic work, which is mainly occupied by women, is still not recognized.

The relationship between class-based habitus and choice of university and field of study

Enrollments in higher education have expanded greatly, but without elimination of all forms of inequality. Research in industrialized countries has shown that the path students follow in their transition from secondary school continues to be associated with their social class. This study provides quantitative evidence of that relationship in a non-industrial country like Chile. Multinomial logistic and linear regression of university admission data managed by the Department of Evaluation, Measurement and Registration describing 130,000 applicants for the years 2015 and 2017 were used to estimate the probability of a member of a particular social class choosing a given university and academic field of study. The results show differences regarding law programs and science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs. Class differences were particularly important in the choice of university. Working-class students were more likely to apply to public universities, avoiding elite and especially private institutions. The findings provide further support for Bourdieu’s habitus explanation of class reproduction. They suggest more attention to the level of segregation in Chilean higher education and the factors that produce it.

New and old educational inequalities in socio-cultural minorities: exploring the school choice experiences of families under the new school admission system in Chile

ABSTRACT In 2016, the Chilean Ministry of Education implemented the new School Admission System (SAS) designed with the goal of equalizing access to schools for the most disadvantaged families and reduce educational segregation. Yet it is not clear if the SAS is sensitive to socio-cultural minorities and their particular conditions. Hence, in this article we explore the school choice experiences of parents from three socio-cultural minorities under the new SAS: Mapuche – indigenous families, Latin American migrant parents, and parents with children with disabilities. Using an intersectional theoretical approach and a qualitative research design, we show that while in some cases the implementation of SAS impedes previous discriminatory processes, in others this new system alone has not yet overcome long-established and inherent educational inequalities in Chilean education. Besides, SAS has also resulted in new challenges in the school choice processes of these parents. Their experiences with the SAS express the intersection of different axis of inequality, according to the conditions and historicities of each group of families. Finally, we reflect on the challenges that the policy faces in regard to develop an educational policy that is fairer to all families, in the context of the unequal and marketized Chilean educational system.

Disrupting the System: How Social Systems Perpetuate Educational Segregation of Students with Extensive Support Needs

Education teams continue to place students with extensive support needs (ESN) in segregated settings despite nearly 50 years of research culminating in the conclusion that students with ESN have better outcomes when educated in general education contexts. This article uses Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory to explain how social systems influence the beliefs, attitudes, and decisions made by education team members about the educational placement of students with ESN. This article describes: (a) Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory to explain how each social system influences decisions made about the educational placement of students with ESN; (b) the history of educational segregation of students with disabilities; (c) macrosystems of education team members and how they perpetuate segregated placement decisions of students with ESN; and (d) actions to disrupt the education system and segregated placement decisions.

Expanding Preservice Teachers’ Conceptions about Disability Through Young Adult Literature

This article provides information and resources to help special education teacher educators improve preservice teachers’ competence for working with disabled1 students and addressing ableism in their classrooms, by incorporating young adult (YA) literature into special education teacher preparation experiences. Embedding YA literature with representations of disability can address ableism in education by helping preservice special education teachers to conceptualize disabled adolescents differently. Current approaches to teacher education may reinforce dysconscious ableism (Broderick & Lalvani, 2017) and undergird educational segregation on the basis of disability. After reviewing current literature on addressing ableism during teacher preparation and using YA literature in teacher education, this article models how special education teacher educators can critically examine YA texts by providing criteria for evaluating representations of disability and a unit plan with three lessons for use in an introductory special education course. A bibliography of young adult books featuring characters with disabilities is also provided.

The Impacts of Ethnicwar in Bosnia and Herzegovina on Education

This paper attempts to explore the factors triggering segregated education in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia and Herzegovina (BİH) is one of the post conflict societies suffering from damages the ethnic war created. Before starting to war BiH belonged to the Yugoslavia where people from different ethnic groups lived side by side in peace. Along with the onset of the war in Yugoslavia, everything was changed and reversed in BiH. Individuals from different ethnic groups became adversaries to each other. The war created deep ethnic, religious and national segregations in BiH which formerly famous with its multiethnic and multicultural tradition. These divisions extended to education system. The war caused destruction and divided schools, curriculums, teachers, and overall education system of the society. In this study using documentary analysis all sub-themes have been explored and discussed in detail that impact segregated education in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Findings display that parents opposition to integrity, lack of trust and international support, politicians and politicized text book and multiple ministries and curriculums are among the factors triggering segregation in education.

Horizontal and Vertical Racial Segregation in Higher Education: Examining Trends in California Public Colleges

ABSTRACT Conceptualizing and measuring trends in segregation in higher education is difficult as both vertical and horizontal sorting is prevalent and patterns vary across racial groups. In this paper, we measure various trends in racial segregation in California for 20 years. We find significant sorting by race both between and within sectors of higher education, though the overall levels of segregation are lower in California’s colleges than they are in California’s high schools. These trends have and remained relatively stable over time. We also find important differences between groups. We see that most Latinx-White and Black-White segregation is due to students attending different schools within the same sector, while Asian-White segregation is increasingly due to students attending schools in different sectors. We also find evidence that policy and structural changes, such as opening a new campus, can affect patterns of segregation across and within sectors.

Overrepresentation of Whiteness Is in Sign Language As Well: A Commentary on “Undoing Competence: Coloniality, Homogeneity, and the Overrepresentation of Whiteness in Applied Linguistics”

Overrepresentation of Whiteness Is in Sign Language As Well: A Commentary on “Undoing Competence: Coloniality, Homogeneity, and the Overrepresentation of Whiteness in Applied Linguistics”

Towards perspectives for research, policy and practice: rethinking educational inequality and segregation in Dutch primary education

ABSTRACT Recent discussions in science, politics and society offer starting points for rethinking the approach to the wicked problem of educational inequality. In our paper, we want to do this by reviewing research, policy and practice in primary education in the Netherlands. Our reflections are first focused on the state of the art in research and the complex educational system from a theoretical perspective (section 2); next we focus on examples of how educational inequality and segregation in policy and practice are addressed in the Netherlands (section 3). Finally, we discuss the new methodological approaches that should be complemented with a new philosophical perspective on segregation and inequality in public policy (section 4). We develop new perspectives using the Netherlands as a specific case study, expecting our perspectives have a more general meaning and might also be useful in the fight against educational inequality and segregation elsewhere.

Learning Management based on Gender Responsive Segregation at MA Raudlatul Ulum

The researh entitled Learning Management based on Gender Responsive Segregation is considered important study in education since many people clash with religious dogma with segregation in education, it is necessary to review how the implementation of gender segreration itself in the education world. In this research, the researcher raised the theme of Islamic education as the location of conducted research at MA Raudlatul Ulum. Islamic education is a holistic education that oriented to whole system, not only its components but its students including values, morality, and skills. This research study uses qualitative with phenomenological methods. In the process of collecting data, the methods used are interviews, participatory observation, documentation and data analysis using context analysis. This research procedure is the stage of research process through analysis of learning management and student learning outcomes, analyzing gender responsive forms and the last is evaluating learning management based on gender responsive segregation. The result of this research shows that learning management conducted at MA Raudlatul Ulum is gender responsive with the implementation of planning in stages that takes into account gender responsive aspects. Then, the process of implementing learning management did not find material that marginalized and streotyped, and was proven by the successful learning outcomes of students.

Reducing racial segregation of public school districts

Racial segregation in public education has been declared as unconstitutional for over 60 years in the United States. Yet many public school districts remain largely separate and unequal. A commonly used approach to reduce school segregation is redelineating school attendance zones to create more racially diverse classrooms. However, there is a need for a school districting approach that can minimize racial or socioeconomic segregation at the district level. In this paper, we develop a spatial optimization model that delineates school attendance zones with the aim of minimizing racial segregation of school district to enable the assessment of the impacts of school attendance zones on the racial segregation of school district. Applications of this model to Riverside Unified School District (RUSD) and San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) in California, USA show that it is possible to reduce racial segregation by 64% at RUSD and 56% at SDUSD, demonstrating the potential of the proposed model.

Culture and the gender gap in choice of major: An analysis using sibling comparisons

We study if there is an association between culture on gender roles and the gender gap in choice of major. For this purpose, we use the epidemiological approach and sibling comparisons. We find that the gender gap in STEM is smaller for individuals who originate in countries where women are more likely, relative to men, to major in STEM. We observe a similar pattern when we study the probability to major in a male- or female-dominated field. We present suggestive evidence that cultural beliefs explain our results. Thus, to limit gender segregation in education this study points to the importance of changing gendered beliefs about educational choices. However, the results indicate that the gender convergence in STEM and male-dominated fields is driven by the fact that men, not women, choose less gender-typical majors. This suggests that to increase women's participation in STEM and male-dominated fields, policies in other areas, e.g., directed towards changing workplace characteristics, may also be necessary.

The Fight for Fair Training: Fair Employment, Defense Worker Training, and the African American Civil Rights Movement in the South, 1940–1945

The Fight for Fair Training:Fair Employment, Defense Worker Training, and the African American Civil Rights Movement in the South, 1940–1945 Bryant Etheridge (bio) If Thurgood Marshall took offense at being counseled on litigation strategy by someone who lacked legal training, he chose not to show it. John L. LeFlore, the secretary of the Mobile, Alabama, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was urging him to make better use of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938). It was 1941, and LeFlore was deeply involved in the wartime civil rights struggles of Black Alabamians, especially their fight to gain employment in the state's booming industries. The Gaines ruling, he advised Marshall, constituted a vital doctrinal resource in the fight for fair employment. Marshall informed LeFlore that the NAACP's legal staff, in response to similar requests from most of the organization's branches, was already developing a test case that addressed LeFlore's concerns. At the upcoming annual conference in Houston, Texas, NAACP members from around the country would coordinate legal strategy. LeFlore, Marshall suggested, could contribute to that effort by representing the NAACP branches of Alabama at the June 1941 conference.1 [End Page 501] As LeFlore fought racism in wartime Mobile, he had no higher priority than winning access to good jobs for Black residents. The struggle to overcome white opposition to equal employment opportunity in the city's shipyards occupied him and other local activists for the rest of the war. While employment as unskilled laborers was often open to African Americans, semiskilled or skilled work was not. As a result, moving up the occupational ladder was a civil rights imperative in Mobile, as it was throughout the United States, during World War II. The assault on the Jim Crow racial division of labor was foremost on LeFlore's mind when he contacted Marshall.2 LeFlore proposed to make the Gaines case, a lawsuit that was part of the NAACP's campaign against segregation, central to attacking racialized economic inequality. The case involved an African American plaintiff, Lloyd Gaines, who had applied to the law school at the University of Missouri. The all-white university rejected Gaines's application. Missouri instead offered to pay Gaines's tuition at an out-of-state law school, a workaround that many southern states used to avoid complying with even the separate-but-equal stipulation of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Gaines declined that arrangement, and the NAACP's legal team filed suit. In 1938, the Supreme Court ruled that Missouri's tuition reimbursement program was unconstitutional. The ruling left the state with two options for graduate law education: to open a law school for Black students or to admit Black students to the existing institution. Although the decision stopped well short of ending segregation in higher education, it was an important milestone on the long road to Brown v. Board of Education (1954). With the Gaines lawsuit, NAACP lawyers aimed, in part, to make segregation too expensive to sustain. The cost of creating separate-but-equal programs in every area of graduate and professional study, they wagered, would prove too heavy a burden for southern states to bear.3 The faith LeFlore showed in the Gaines ruling as a solution to the problem of fair employment in Mobile's shipyards appears misplaced. The categorical distinction between the NAACP's legal campaign against segregated education, on one hand, and the concurrent but separate fight for economic justice, on the other, underpins our basic conceptualization of the civil rights movement in the 1940s. If alleviating [End Page 502] economic inequality was LeFlore's objective, his propounding the utility of Gaines seems to amount to a non sequitur. Perhaps LeFlore was confused. Perhaps, in offering guidance on constitutional law to an NAACP attorney, he had gotten in over his head and misconstrued the Court's ruling in Gaines. Or maybe LeFlore just screwed up and cited the wrong case. If LeFlore misunderstood the Gaines decision, he was not alone. He informed Marshall that in Mobile, Black residents stood broadly in support of using Gaines as a...

Reproduction of academic and socioeconomic segregation in the transition to postsecondary education: A new approach

Highly massified and differentiated postsecondary education systems tend to replicate the stratification and social segregation of previous educational levels, thus maintaining social inequity in their access. In this regard, gaps in academic test scores are frequently perceived to be a fundamental transmission channel of socioeconomic segregation from secondary to postsecondary education. Within this framework, the purpose of this study is to analyze whether and to what degree socioeconomic segregation is reproduced in the transition from secondary to postsecondary education and how much of the socioeconomic segregation is related to academic segregation in the latter. Using a modified Dissimilarity Index to quantify the segregation of three Chilean cohorts, we find that, unlike in secondary education, academic performance is more decisive than socioeconomic background in the distribution of students in postsecondary education, with a notable reduction in the socioeconomic segregation levels in the transition to the latter. However, using a pioneering approach, we also find that less than half of the socioeconomic segregation in postsecondary education is related to academic sorting, suggesting that factors other than academic admission criteria are more relevant in explaining unequal distribution of students from different socioeconomic background in postsecondary education.

How education and racial segregation intersect in neighborhoods with persistently low COVID-19 vaccination rates in Philadelphia

BackgroundCOVID-19 infection has disproportionately affected socially disadvantaged neighborhoods. Despite this disproportionate burden of infection, these neighborhoods have also lagged in COVID-19 vaccinations. To date, we have little understanding of the ways that various types of social conditions intersect to explain the complex causes of lower COVID-19 vaccination rates in neighborhoods.MethodsWe used configurational comparative methods (CCMs) to study COVID-19 vaccination rates in Philadelphia by neighborhood (proxied by zip code tabulation areas). Specifically, we identified neighborhoods where COVID-19 vaccination rates (per 10,000) were persistently low from March 2021 – May 2021. We then assessed how different combinations of social conditions (pathways) uniquely distinguished neighborhoods with persistently low vaccination rates from the other neighborhoods in the city. Social conditions included measures of economic inequities, racial segregation, education, overcrowding, service employment, public transit use, health insurance and limited English proficiency.ResultsTwo factors consistently distinguished neighborhoods with persistently low COVID-19 vaccination rates from the others: college education and concentrated racial privilege. Two factor values together – low college education AND low/medium concentrated racial privilege – identified persistently low COVID-19 vaccination rates in neighborhoods, with high consistency (0.92) and high coverage (0.86). Different values for education and concentrated racial privilege – medium/high college education OR high concentrated racial privilege – were each sufficient by themselves to explain neighborhoods where COVID-19 vaccination rates were not persistently low, likewise with high consistency (0.93) and high coverage (0.97).ConclusionsPairing CCMs with geospatial mapping can help identify complex relationships between social conditions linked to low COVID-19 vaccination rates. Understanding how neighborhood conditions combine to create inequities in communities could inform the design of interventions tailored to address COVID-19 vaccination disparities.

Why do women opt for gender-atypical fields of study? The increasing role of income motivation over time

Gender segregation in fields of study represents an important explanation for gender inequalities in the labor market, such as the gender wage gap. Research shows that horizontal gender segregation in higher education persists for a variety of reasons, including women’s greater communal goals and men’s greater motivation to earn high incomes. Yet with the male breadwinner model in decline, a key question is whether women’s motivation to earn high incomes might contribute to increasing women’s participation in female-atypical fields of study. Using data from the German Student Survey over a period of 30 years, our findings show that the proportion of women enrolled in female-atypical fields of study increased from 1984 to 2015. Moreover, women’s motivation to earn high incomes mediates the effect of time on enrollment in female-atypical fields of study. Their motivation to earn high incomes might thus be a factor contributing to the disruption of gender segregation in fields of study over time. Furthermore, contrary to expectations, the motivation to earn high incomes as a driving force for women to opt for gender-atypical fields of study is not stratified by social background.

From Residential Neighborhood to Activity Space: The Effects of Educational Segregation on Crime and Their Moderation by Social Context

The segregation–crime relationship is a classic topic in sociology and crime geography, yet existing literature mainly focuses on the impact of racial segregation at the global scale. Little is known about the impact of local segregation of other socioeconomic characteristics such as education level, an important segregation factor for racially homogenous countries like China. Also unknown is their impact beyond the residential domain. Using the Baidu Map Location-Based Service population data set and court records in 863 local geographic units of the central urban area of Beijing during 2018 and 2019, this study uncovers the spatial pattern of segregation between people with and without a bachelor’s degree measured in the residential space and activity space and further investigates the influence of these two types of educational segregation and their interaction effects with social context on theft and violent crime. Results show less segregation in the activity space than in the residential space. Both types of segregation, however, significantly increase the risk of theft and violence, with activity space–based segregation more consequential. Moreover, the positive segregation–crime link is moderated by the local social context measured by the educational composition among residents and the ambient population. Compared with residential segregation, activity space–based segregation is more detrimental for places dominated by the less educated. Our results highlight the elevated influence of segregation on safety beyond the residential space, especially for areas clustered with the less educated ambient population.