School commitment and alcohol use: The moderating role of race and ethnicity.

Research indicates that lower levels of school commitment may be one potential outcome of policy initiatives such as high-stakes testing and exit exams. Such outcomes may lead these policy initiatives to have unintended consequences for students, particularly racial or ethnic minority students. This study examines whether race or ethnicity moderate the relationship between school commitment and alcohol use or binge drinking among a sample of Florida public middle and high-school students who were surveyed as part of the 2002 Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey. Low school commitment was found to be associated with a greater likelihood of alcohol use in the past 30 days and a greater likelihood of binge drinking during the past two weeks for Black, Hispanic, and White students. Both the higher average levels of school commitment among Black and Hispanic than among white students and the greater association between low school commitment and the two alcohol use outcomes for Black and Hispanic students compared to White students account for some of the difference in alcohol use and binge drinking among the different groups. <hr> <sup>1</sup> Financial assistance for this study was provided by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (grant number R01 AA13167) and the National Institute of Drug Abuse (grant number R01 DA018645-01A1). We gratefully acknowledge Michael French and members of the Health Economics Research Group (HERG) for their research suggestions and William Russell for editorial assistance. The authors are entirely responsible for the research and results reported in this paper, and their position or opinions do not necessarily represent those of NIAAA or NIDA

Dimensions of racial segregation, hypersegregation, and Black homicide rates

Prior research assessing the association between racial residential segregation and Black urban homicides has not considered each of the five dimensions of segregation or the phenomenon of hypersegregation. In this study, indicators of each of the five dimensions of segregation, as well as measures of severe segregation and hypersegregation were considered, in order to assess Black homicide rates across 201 metropolitan statistical areas. Four of the five indicators of segregation were found to predict the dependent variable, although some evidence of an empirical overlap between dimensions was uncovered. Additionally, two indicators of severe segregation (exposure and centralization dimensions) and two measures of hypersegregation (i.e., a dummy variable and a count of the number of dimensions of severe segregation that exist in a given metro area) were found to be associated with Black homicides. The findings were interpreted as supporting Massey and Denton's ideas about the consequences of hypersegregation and Wilson's notion of concentrated disadvantage as explanations for Black urban homicide rates.

Cumulative exposure to stressful life events and male gang membership

Abstract In this article, the authors examine risk factors that predict gang membership among a cohort of South Florida boys. Using both prospective and retrospective data, the authors evaluated the role of early exposure to stressful life events in predicting joining a gang, controlling for other risk factors. The analysis revealed that while cumulative preteen stress exposure was not found to be a significant predictor of gang membership, the association between such exposure and the dependent variable might be mediated through other factors. A subsequent analysis of associations with gang members/gang-like behavior revealed a similar pattern—race, family financial problems, and preteen cumulative exposure to stressful life events were each found to predict association/behavior and involvement with gangs

Economic Segregation, Race, and Homicide

Prior research assessing the association between structured inequality and homicides has produced inconsistent findings, particularly in regard to establishing an association between economic disadvantage and black homicide rates. In this study, we employ a measure of the spatial distribution of income, Jargowksy's (1996) economic segregation measure, to assess overall and race-specific homicide rates. Copyright (c) 2006 Southwestern Social Science Association.

Accountability in a Postdesegregation Era : The Continuing Significance of Racial Segregation in Florida\u27s Schools.

In the wake of both the end of court-ordered school desegregation and the growing popularity of accountability as a mechanism to maximize student achievement, the authors explore the association between racial segregation and the percentage of students passing high-stakes tests in Florida\u27s schools. Results suggest that segregation matters in predicting school-level performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test after control for other known and purported predictors of standardized test performance. Also, these results suggest that neither recent efforts by the state of Florida to equalize the funding of education nor current efforts involving high-stakes testing will close the Black-White achievement gap without consideration of the racial distribution of students across schools