Race and Academic Achievement in Racially Diverse High Schools

  1. There is no African American race gap in GPA net of background, verbal ability, freshman-year performance, and sophomore course placement.
  2. African Americans in these racially diverse schools are more likely than Whites and Asians to enroll in 4-year colleges, once controlling for all other factors.
  3. Schools vary in the extent to which African American and Latino students are underrepresented in advanced sophomore math classes. This pattern of racial inequality in schools is associated with lower minority senior-year grades and enrollment in 4-year post-secondary institutions, net of students’ own background.
  4. The racial stratification that comes about through sophomore math course-taking patterns, such that in some schools, Latino and African American students are greatly under-represented in advanced classes, was associated with lower GPA’s and rates of 4-year college enrollment among these minority students compared with Whites and Asians. Such effects are net of powerful controls for background, preparation, early performance, and sophomore course placement. This suggests that how schools assign students to courses may contribute to racial inequality of educational opportunity in some racially diverse schools.
  5. They also found that in schools where White and Asian students had much higher levels of parental education compared with parents of African American students, African American students tended to earn lower senior-year GPA’s even after the individual background, preparation, and early performance variables were held constant. They did not find this pattern among Latinos in their Latino school sample.
  6. Schools vary in the extent to which African American and Latino students are underrepresented in advanced sophomore math classes. This pattern of racial inequality in schools is associated with lower minority senior-year grades and enrollment in 4-year post-secondary institutions, net of students’ own background.
  7. Evidence consistently suggests that schools can play an active role in the provision of opportunities for social mobility or in the exacerbation of social inequality, depending on how they are structured.