Racial Preferences for Schools: Evidence from an Experiment with White, Black, Latinx, and Asian Parents and Students

Most U.S. students attend racially segregated schools. To understand this pattern, I employ a survey experiment with New York City families actively choosing schools and investigate whether they express racialized school preferences. I find school racial composition heterogeneously affects white, black, Latinx, and Asian parents’ and students’ willingness to attend schools. Independent of characteristics potentially correlated with race, white and Asian families preferred white schools over black and Latinx schools, Latinx families preferred Latinx schools over black schools, and black families preferred black schools over white schools. Results, importantly, demonstrate that racial composition has larger effects on white and Latinx parents’ preferences compared with white and Latinx students and smaller effects on black parents compared with black students. To ensure results were not an artifact of experimental conditions, I validate findings using administrative data on New York City families’ actual school choices in 2013. Both analyses establish that families express heterogenous racialized school preferences.

Race-Discordant School Attendance and Cognitive Function in Later Life

Early schooling plays an important role in shaping cognitive development, both due to the level of academic rigor and the social environment of primary and secondary schools. This is reflected in current racial disparities in cognitive function in later life. Older minorities who attended predominantly White schools with more resources experienced significant cognitive benefits. This study explores whether there are benefits to cognitive functioning in later life from having attended socially diverse schools in early life. We examine the effects of having attended schools composed primarily of different race peers—race discordant schools (RDS)—among Black, Hispanic, and White older adults. Using retrospective and prospective data from the Health and Retirement Study, we examine the association between RDS exposure and four measures of cognitive function (working memory, episodic memory, mental status, overall cognitive function). We assess function at age 55 and 70, and examine change in functioning between age 55 and 70. We find that RDS exposed Blacks and Hispanics experience significant benefits in cognitive function at age 55, but only Blacks experience benefits at age 70. RDS exposed Whites reported higher overall working memory at age 70 relative to Whites in non-RDS schools, suggesting a cognitive benefit from diversity. Results suggest that exposure to more racially diverse school environments have potentially beneficial effects on cognitive function over the life course. Our findings suggest that the cultivation of diversity in schools could be an important long-term public health investment.

THE COMPLEXITY OF IDENTITY FORMATION OF BLACK LEARNERS ATTENDING HISTORICALLY WHITE SCHOOLS

This purpose of this paper is to examine the complexity of identity formation experienced by black learners attending historically white high schools in the Northern Cape. Black South Africans were considered and treated as both intellectually and racially inferior during the apartheid years. This may have created an identity dilemma for a number of generations of South African blacks. The situation was further exacerbated, when black learners were admitted to historically white schools. The staff component (mostly white) of historically white schools appeared to be inadequately prepared for these drastic changes. Consequently, the school that should normally contribute to developing a positive identity formation of learners, seemingly had the opposite effect on black learners. An empirical investigation, by way of the quantitative research method was employed, to ascertain the perceived effect historically white schools have on the identity formation of black learners attending these schools. Some of the findings of this study indicate the manifestation of negative influences, low educator expectations, the disjuncture between the home- and school education, as well as the high failure and drop-out rate, of black learners, as having an effect on the identity formation of black learners. Certain suggestions are made as to how to address the situation.

The Provision of school library resources in a changing environment

Before 1994 education in South Africa was divided along racial lines. There were separate departments of education for whites, coloureds (people of mixed decent), Indians (people of East Indian decent), and blacks (black Africans). Education for white children was much better funded than any of the others. The quality of the education that white children enjoyed was also much better as schools were better equipped, teachers were better qualified and classes were smaller. This inequality also applied to school library provision. All white schools had well-equipped libraries and full-time teacher-librarians. A start was made with libraries in the other departments, but , for example, only secondary schools for black learners had libraries. Black primary schools were just provided with classroom collections.

Racial Discrimination Stress, School Belonging, and School Racial Composition on Academic Attitudes and Beliefs among Black Youth

It is important to consider racialized experiences and proximal indicators of academic success for Black youth when understanding the achievement gap. Acknowledging that racial discrimination is detrimental for the academic success of Black youth, this study extended previous research by examining the influence of racial discrimination stress. Using hierarchical regression analysis and a moderated moderation model, this study examined racial discrimination stress and school belonging as predictors of academic attitudes and beliefs among 344 Black youth (M age = 15.6). Additionally, we examined the interactive effects of school belonging as a buffer for racial discrimination stress, with particular focus on majority White schools. Analyses revealed that school belonging was linked with academic competence, academic efficacy, and academic skepticism. Furthermore, school belonging buffered the impact of racial discrimination stress on academic efficacy among Black youth in majority White schools. These findings highlight the co-occurrence of risk and protective factors among Black youth and demonstrate the additive influence of school racial composition on academic attitudes and beliefs. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings demonstrate the crucial role of school context in understanding risk and protective factors for the academic attitudes and beliefs of Black youth.

The Problem of Student Disengagement: Struggle, Escapism and Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy

Numerous studies have shown that secondary and college students are increasingly apathetic and disengaged from their schooling. The problem of student disengagement is not confined to under-represented socioeconomic groups; it is found across the country—in cities, suburbs, and rural communities; in wealthy schools and poor schools; in public schools and charter schools; in majority white schools and those composed largely of students of color. In this essay, we argue that Friedrich Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy contains crucial pedagogical and conceptual resources for responding to this widespread problem. The conception of “Dionysian pessimism” Nietzsche advances in this early work and its relationship to the escapist, “Alexandrianism” he observes in late 19th century German education are relevant to the contemporary problem of student disengagement, we argue, because they address head on the reality of struggle in students’ academic experiences and can potentially explain the disengagement they experience when they fail to acknowledge, accept and even embrace the struggle of education. When struggle is seen as something to be avoided and endured only for the sake of later academic and career success, as it often is, Nietzsche argues that apathy, disengagement and even resentment can result. Thus, while Nietzsche’s diagnosis is rooted in an analysis of his own culture and time, this essay hopes to show that it has the potential to speak to important practical issues in contemporary education.

West of Jim Crow

This book follows California’s history of segregation from statehood to the beginning of the long civil rights movement, arguing that the state innovated methods to control and contain African Americans and other people of color. While celebrated in popular discourse for its forward-thinking culture, politics, and science, California also pioneered new ways to keep citizenship white. Schools, streetcars, restaurants, theaters, parks, beaches, and pools were places of contestation where the presence of black bodies elicited forceful responses from segregationists. Black Californians employed innovative measures to dismantle segregation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; they borrowed some tactics from race rebels in the South, others they improvised. West of Jim Crow uses California to highlight the significance of African American resistance to racial restrictions in places often deemed marginal to mainstream civil rights histories. Examining segregation in the state sheds light on the primacy of gender and sexuality in the minds of segregationists and the significance of black women, black bodies, and racial science, in the years preceding the modern civil rights struggle. California has much to teach us about the lives of African Americans who crossed the color line and the variety of tactics and strategies employed by freedom fighters across the United States.

Demographic implications of transiting from segregation to integration: a focus on education issues in Buffalo City, South Africa

The study aims at interrogating the transformation of education in Buffalo City following integration of East London with its black townships. This paper is largely framed from a quantitative paradigm that draws from statistical data in linking population changes with educational patterns in the study area. Census data was used to trace population changes in post-apartheid South Africa, while performance in education was informed by matriculation results. Quantitative data were complemented with key informants’ qualitative opinions. The results indicate that the quality of education in former “white” schools is better than that of “township” schools. There are several pull factors that attract township learners to former white schools, albeit with integration challenges. The study concludes that if these challenges are masked to education planners and policy makers, they militate against the envisioned liberalisation of the democratic education system.

Connecting Public School Segregation with Urban Renewal and Interstate Highway Planning: The Case of Birmingham, Alabama

This article analyzes the connection between public school segregation and Urban Renewal and interstate highway construction in Birmingham, Alabama. It analyzes the routes of the interstate highways, the locations of Urban Renewal areas, and their impact on segregated schools and school zones. This article argues that interstate highways and Urban Renewal were used to preserve segregated schools. It also argues that activists for White schools were able to affect interstate highway design while activists for African American schools were not. Also, Urban Renewal funds were used to build new segregated schools and neighborhoods in order to reinforce patterns of segregation.