Relative group size and minority school success: the role of intergroup friendship and discrimination experiences

From an intergroup relations perspective, relative group size is associated with the quantity and quality of intergroup contact: more positive contact (i.e., intergroup friendship) supports, and negative contact (i.e., experienced discrimination) hampers, minority identity, and school success. Accordingly, we examined intergroup contact as the process through which perceived relative proportions of minority and majority students in school affected minority success (i.e., school performance, satisfaction, and self-efficacy). Turkish minorities (N = 1,060) were compared in four Austrian and Belgian cities which differ in their typical school ethnic composition. Across cities, minority experiences of intergroup contact fully mediated the impact of perceived relative group size on school success. As expected, higher minority presence impaired school success through restricting intergroup friendship and increasing experienced discrimination. The association between minority presence and discrimination was curvilinear, however, so that schools where minority students predominated offered some protection from discrimination. To conclude, the comparative findings reveal positive and negative intergroup contact as key processes that jointly explain when and how higher proportions of minority students affect school success

Retention of Undergraduate Minority Students in Institutions of Higher Education

This article is concerned with the retention of minority undergraduate students, offering recommendations which contribute to a higher rate of student retention in postsecondary institutions. The first section provides a brief introduction to the state-of-the-art concerning attrition and retention. The development of a retention program for minority students comprises the second, more comprehensive section. It provides a listing of resources concerned with the problem. Concluding recommendations are presented which can contribute to the successful retention of minority students

Strategies for supporting schools and teachers in order to foster social inclusion: UK interim report

The focus in this report is on those strategies used to address the disadvantages experienced by minority background students in schools within the United Kingdom (UK) and the wider policy context in which these operate. More specifically, the focus is on four groups of students: ethnic minority students including refugee and asylum seekers’ children; Gypsy/traveller students; Students in care (Looked After Children – LAC); and, linguistic minorities e.g. Gaelic, Welsh

Promise Abandoned: How Policy Choices and Institutional Practices Restrict College Opportunities

Promise Abandoned sharply criticizes trends in federal, state, and college practices that discourage low-income and minority students from enrolling and graduating from college. In fact, despite the perception of progress, gaps in college-going and college completion for poor and minority students are actually wider than they were thirty years ago

Can State Language Policies Distort Students' Demand for Higher Education?

This paper takes advantage of a recent policy experiment in Ukraine's secondary education system to study the effect of stricter requirements for proficiency in the state language on linguistic minority students’ demand for, as well as opportunities to pursue, further studies at the university level. The reform that we consider obligated all minority students, including those studying in public schools with a full cycle of education in minority languages, to take a standardized school exit test (which is also a university entry test) in Ukrainian, the state language, thus denying them previously granted access to translated tests. Using school-level data and employing the difference-in-difference estimator we find evidence that the reform resulted in a decline in the number of subjects taken by minority students at the school exit test. There was also a notable shift in the take-up of particular subjects, with fewer exams taken by minority students in more linguistically-demanding subjects such as History, Biology, and Geography, and more exams taken in foreign languages and Math. Overall, our results suggest some distortions in the accumulation of human capital by linguistic minority students induced by the language policy.language policy, economics of minorities, education, Ukraine

[Review of] James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks, eds. Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives

With a rapidly increasing minority population in the United States, it is more important than ever for both future and experienced teachers to recognize and appreciate the diversity of young people enrolled in our schools. By the year 2000 it is projected that one of three or more students will be part of an ethnic minority. In some cities and states, minority background students are already the majority school population. Teachers will be facing more and more students from different ethnic, cultural, language, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds. Many classes will include special needs students who are gifted, handicapped, or both. It is also important for teachers to keep in mind that most students will represent several of these backgrounds, and their behaviors and values will be influenced accordingly. In addition, teachers will need to be sensitive to gender differences. All in all, teachers\u27 responsibilities will increase in the coming years

THE ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN SEXUAL VICTIMIZATION AND HEALTH OUTCOMES AMONG LGBQA COLLEGE STUDENTS: EXAMINING THE MODERATING ROLE OF SOCIAL SUPPORT

Sexual victimization is a prevailing public health concern that differentially impacts sexual minority populations (i.e., people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, or queer) compared with their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts (McCauley et al., 2018). Studies have shown that sexual violence is associated with depressive symptoms, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, and alcohol use (Aosved et al., 2011; Bedard-Gilligan et al, 2011; Carey et al., 2018) among heterosexual college students. However, we know less about the potential effects of sexual victimization on health outcomes among sexual minority college students. Understanding these relations are especially important because sexual minority college students often experience unique challenges and are at increased risk of sexual victimization in comparison to their counterparts (Cantor et al., 2015; Edwards et al., 2015). Moreover, few studies to date have examined the moderating role of social support in buffering the links between sexual victimization and health outcomes. Guided by the minority stress framework (Meyer, 2003), the current study examined the extent to which sexual victimization influences health outcomes (i.e., depressive symptoms, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, and alcohol use disorder) among sexual minority college students. Furthermore, we examined whether social support moderated the association between sexual victimization and each health outcome. The current study included 234 students who identified as being part of the Queer community (e.g., Gay, Lesbian, Asexual, and Queer) from a larger university-wide study (i.e., Spit for Science; Dick et al., 2014). The participants in the present study were 18-22 years old (M = 18.46, SD = .412) and majority female (i.e., 74%). Fifty-six percent of the participants self- identified as White, 16% as Black or African American, 13% as Asian, and 15% as American Indian, Latinx, Pacific Islander, or Multiracial. Students provided online self-reports of their sexual victimization experiences (Blake et al., 1990), social support (Hays et al., 1995), depressive symptoms (Derogatis et al., 1973), post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms (Weathers et al., 2013) and alcohol use (DSM-V). We used a series of regression models in Mplus v 7.2 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2014) to test our research questions, with multiple imputation to handle missing data. Findings indicated that sexual victimization was positively related to depressive symptoms (b = .21, p = .00), post- traumatic stress disorder symptoms (b = .43, p = .00), and alcohol use disorder (b = .45, p = .00). Furthermore, social support significantly moderated the association between sexual victimization and depressive symptoms, however, in a direction contrary to hypotheses. Specifically, greater sexual victimization was associated with greater depressive symptoms among sexual minority college students with higher levels of social support (b = .29, p = .00), and the association was not significant for sexual minority college students with lower levels of social support (b = .13, p = .26; Figure 1). Discussion will center on the detrimental effects of sexual victimization on health outcomes among sexual minority college students, as well as providing potential explanations and future directions for the nuanced ways social support functions in the lives of sexual minority college students.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/gradposters/1079/thumbnail.jp

Note: Bilingual Education - A Problem of Substantial Numbers

This unsigned note argues that the Supreme Court should reexamine the rights of language minority students under 42 U.S.C. §2000d in order to clarify its holding in Lau v. Nichols. In that case, the Court established the right of non-English speaking children to receive compensatory language instruction under that statute. The note analogizes language minority children to handicapped children who the Court has held are entitled to receive a minimal education which is geared toward their needs. Since language minority students may not be able to obtain minimal education without compensatory language instruction, they may be entitled to such instruction

Peer Ethnicity and Achievement: a Meta-analysis Into the Compositional Effect

This study reports a meta-analysis on the effects of ethnic minority share in school on achievement test scores. Best evidence from the studies that have appeared thus far on this topic shows that these compositional effects appear small in general, but may be larger when the ethnic minority group is African Americans in the USA, than when the minority group consists of immigrants. A high share of students from an ethnic minority group seems to affect the achievement from students belonging to the same ethnic group more, than the achievement of students belonging to the ethnic majority or to other ethnic minority groups. Effects of the share of immigrants on test scores of ethnic majority students even seem to be close to zero. Several robustness checks confirm our results. The review concludes with a discussion of implications for research and policy practice.academic achievement, meta-analysis, racial composition, school segregation, ethnic groups

Effects of Representation in Media on Race Perceptions

This study examined the impact that television platforms have on perpetuating the stereotypes assigned to minority groups by majority groups, specifically among young adult populations. Previous studies have focused on the impact of misrepresentation in the media on individuals that identify with minority groups. However, this study assessed the impact of television platforms on minority groups’ internalized perceptions of self. It also assessed the impact of television platforms on majority groups’ implicit bias based on the quality and quantity of representation consumed. We hypothesized that the more exposure people have to positive representation, the less implicit biases they will have against minority groups. Online surveys were sent to students at multiple universities in the Northwest Indiana region. Students watching habits were compared to both implicit bias and internal perception of self. This study has important implications on how racial biases are formed and how more positive and accurate portrayals of minority groups on television platforms have the potential to shape better race relations in the future