- Segregation still matters but it is the socioeconomic composition not the racial composition of high schools that impacts student achievement.
- Effects of socioeconomic segregation can be largely explained by its association with such school characteristics as academic climate and teacher expectations.
- What matters the most is the socioeconomic, not the racial, composition of schools.
- A number of structural features of high schools, such as school size and sector, predict achievement growth, although none of the resource variables had a significant effect.
- Schools influenced the achievement of students from all backgrounds.
- Results suggest that the reason school SES matters is that it is related to a number of school processes that predict achievement growth.
- School policies and practices (teacher expectation and academic climate ) did account for the effect of school SES.
- Desegregation may not be necessary if it were possible to alter those policies and practices that are associated with schools SES.
- The average socioeconomic level of students’ schools had as much impact on their achievement growth as their own socioeconomic status, net of other background factors.
- School socioeconomic status had as much impact on advantaged as on disadvantaged students, and almost as much impact on Whites as on Blacks.
- Schools serving mostly lower-income students tend to be organized and operated differently than those serving more-affluent students, transcending other school-level differences such as public or private, large or small.