Abstract
Although it is clear that racial segregation is linked to academic achievement gaps, the mechanisms underlying this link have been debated since James Coleman published his eponymous 1966 report. In this paper, I examine sixteen distinct measures of segregation to determine which is most strongly associated with academic achievement gaps. I find clear evidence that one aspect of segregation in particular—the disparity in average school poverty rates between white and black students’ schools—is consistently the single most powerful correlate of achievement gaps, a pattern that holds in both bivariate and multivariate analyses. This implies that high-poverty schools are, on average, much less effective than lower-poverty schools and suggests that strategies that reduce the differential exposure of black, Hispanic, and white students to poor schoolmates may lead to meaningful reductions in academic achievement gaps.
- Copyright © 2016 by Russell Sage Foundation. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Reproduction by the United States Government in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose. The research described here was supported by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences (R305D110018) and the Spencer Foundation (201500058). The paper would not have been possible without the assistance of Ross Santy, who facilitated access to the data. This paper benefited substantially from ongoing collaboration with Andrew Ho, Demetra Kalogrides, and Kenneth Shores. Some of the data used in this paper were provided by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent the views of NCES, the Institute of Education Sciences, the Spencer Foundation, or the U.S. Department of Education. Direct correspondence to: Sean F. Reardon at sean.reardon{at}stanford.edu, 520 CERAS Building, no. 526, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
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