How policies that promote school competition and choice arelinked to school segregation

The past decade has seen growing concerns about the resegregation of American schools after years of effort to end their segregation. In new research, Jeremy Fiel argues that much of this trend is down to new policies which give families the opportunity to take advantage of schools they see as being ‘better’. Using school system data from 1993 to 2010, he finds that school segregation in cities was highest when school resources were distributed unequally across schools and districts and when families had more choice to send their children to private or charter schools

Despite education policies to the contrary, demographic changes have been the driving force behind the resegregation of American schools.

While the U.S. began its move away from formal segregation in the mid-1950s, by the 1990s a trend of declining white presence in minorities’ schools had appeared. Jeremy E. Fiel examines these trends, and looks at why minorities are increasingly attending schools with fewer whites. He argues that despite favorable changes in the social and policy factors that affect students’ distribution across schools, demographic changes have been the driving forces in the apparent resegregation of schools in the past two decades. He writes that previous policy measures to encourage diversity in schools may no longer be effective; new ones are needed now to reverse the trend towards increasing minority isolation

The Transmission of Multigenerational Educational Inequality

This study explores the transmission of educational inequality across three generations in the U.S. It addresses two common problems in analyses of multigenerational inequality: omitted mechanisms of indirect transmissions through grandparents’ early influences on parents, and theoretically problematic tests of direct effects based on non-zero residual grandparent-child associations. The first problem leads to upwardly biased direct effect estimates; analyses that control for parents’ attributes and experiences during their own childhood eliminate most grandparent-child educational associations. Conversely, the second problem can obscure direct effects. This study avoids inferring direct effects from residual grandparent-child associations by assessing the explanatory power of measured child attributes that constitute likely mechanisms of direct effects. It finds little evidence of direct effects overall, although there is some indication of direct effects on bachelor’s degree attainment among those with the most educated grandparents. The findings also speak to potential mechanisms of direct and indirect educational transmissions.24 month embargo; published: 23 August 2018This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

With All Deliberate Speed: The Reversal of Court-Ordered School Desegregation, 1970–2013

The retrenchment of court-ordered school desegregation has been more variable and incomplete than often acknowledged, challenging common accounts that blame changes in federal policy and legal precedent. This study supplements these accounts by examining local factors that influenced whether and when desegregation orders were dismissed between 1970 and 2013. After accounting for federal policy changes and districts' variable success in desegregating schools, several ostensibly race-neutral organizational, financial, and political incentives appear to influence the survival of desegregation orders. Racial competition dynamics related to local racial composition also seem to play a role, as desegregation orders have been most vulnerable when and where black population shares surpass a tipping point of about 40%.12 month embargo; 31 May 2019This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

School Opportunity Hoarding? Racial Segregation and Access to High Growth Schools

Persistent school segregation may allow advantaged groups to hoard educational opportunities and consign minority students to lower-quality educational experiences. Although minority students are concentrated in low-achieving schools, relatively little previous research directly links segregation to measures of school quality based on student achievement growth, which more plausibly reflect learning opportunities. Using a dataset of public elementary schools in California, this study provides the first analysis detailing the distribution of a growth-based measure of school quality using standard inequality indices, allowing disparities to be decomposed across geographic and organizational scales. We find mixed support for the school opportunity hoarding hypothesis. We find small White and Asian advantages in access to high-growth schools, but most of the inequality in exposure to school growth is within racial groups. Growth-based disparities both between and within groups tend to be on a more local scale than disparities in absolute achievement levels, focusing attention on within-district policies to mitigate school-based inequalities in opportunities to learn.US Department of Education [R305B120013]; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health [P01HD065704]24 month embargo; Published: 03 February 2017This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]