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2006 - Implications of Income-Based School Assignment Policies for Racial School Segregation

Attribution: Reardon, Sean F., Yun, John T., & Kurlaender, Michal
Researchers: John T. YunMichal KurlaenderSean F. Reardon
University Affiliation: Stanford University; University of California, Santa Barbara; University of California, Davis
Email: sean.reardon@stanford.edu
Research Question:
Will income-based integration create racial integration?
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
Journal Entry: Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 49-75
Year: 2006
Findings:
  • Examines the extent to which race neutral income integration plans would produce racial integration.
  • The study finds that even under stringent income-based integration, school assignment based on exact family income and achieving complete income balance, income integration is no guarantee of even modest levels of racial integration.
  • The extent of racial integration guaranteed by an incomeintegration policy is very sensitive to the way in which income integration is defined in practice.
Keywords: CompositionDesegregationSESRegions: NationalMethodologies: QuantitativeResearch Designs: SurveyAnalysis Methods: Descriptive Statistics Sampling Frame:National
Sampling Types: RandomAnalysis Units: School DistrictData Types: Quantitative-Cross Sectional
Data Description:
  • The study takes data from the Common Core of Data (CCD) of NCES from 89 of the 100 largest school districts in the US in the 2001-2002 school year. The data is used to estimate the lower bound on the level of racial segregation. Poverty rate and racial composition of each school are used to compute the white-black poverty rate for each district and the upper and lower bounds on racial segregation:

    • 1) under income integration requiring perfect poverty rate balance and

    • 2) under income integration requiring approximate balance. Data are also taken from the ECLS-K (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort), a nationally representative sample of K students, 1998-1999.
  • Segregation measured using the normalized exposure index which measures the gap between the observed exposure level of one group to another and the exposure level that would occur in a situation of perfect integration, where exposure is defined as the average proportion of the second group in the schools attended by students of the first group.
  • DV: Racial integration
  • IV: Income-based integration
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:
Archives: K-12 Integration, Desegregation, and Segregation Abstracts
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