2010 - Race and Academic Achievement in Racially Diverse High Schools

Attribution: Muller, Chandra, Riegle-Crumb, Catherine, Schiller, Kathryn S., Wilkinson, Lindsey, & Frank, Kenneth A.
Researchers: Catherine Riegle-CrumbChandra MullerKathryn S. SchillerKenneth A. FrankLindsey Wilkinson
University Affiliation: University of Texas at Austin; University at Albany, State University of New York; Portland State University; Michigan State University
Email: cmuller@austin.utexas.edu
Research Question:
The authors investigate whether racially diverse high schools offer equality of educational opportunity to students from different racial and ethnic groups. This is examined by measuring the relative representation of minority students in advanced math classes at the beginning of high school and estimating whether and how this opportunity structure limits the level of achievement attained by African American and Latino students by the end of high school.
Published: Yes
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Teacher College Record
Journal Entry: Vol. 112, No. 4, Pp. 1038-1063
Year: 2010
Findings:
  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.
Scholarship Types: Journal Article Reporting Empirical ResearchKeywords: Academic AchievementCollegeCollege EnrollmentDiversityGPAMathRaceSchool CompositionTrackingRegions: NationalMethodologies: QuantitativeResearch Designs: Secondary Survey DataAnalysis Methods: Descriptive StatisticsHierarchal Linear Modeling Sampling Frame:High school students attending diverse schools
Sampling Types: Nationally RepresentativeAnalysis Units: SchoolStudentData Types: Quantitative-Longitudinal
Data Description:
  • Data from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study (AHAA) and its partner study, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a study of students in U.S. high schools first surveyed in 1994-1995 and tracked them through 2002-2003.
  • Two samples of racially diverse high schools were used in the analysis: one with African Americans, Whites, and Asians (26 schools with 3,149 students), and the other with Latinos, Whites, and Asians (22 schools with 2,775 students).
  • The first dependent variable was the grade point average (GPA) of all senior-year courses. The second dependent variable was measured whether the student was currently attending, or graduated from, a 4-year college. The reference category included students who graduated from high school, those who attended or graduated from 2-year colleges, and students who started at 4-year colleges and dropped out. These models were estimated for high school graduates only.
  • To capture the academic opportunity structure within high schools in racially diverse schools, the authors constructed a key school-level indicator to measure the under-representation of African American or Latino students in advanced math classes at the beginning of high school, relative to the representation of White and Asian students. They focused on the proportion of students of different race and ethnicities in advanced math as sophomores. Advanced math is defined as taking algebra II or above as a sophomore.
  • The authors controlled for the logit proportion of Latinos in the school and the logit proportion of African Americans in the school. Also, they controlled for the school location (urban, suburban or rural) and region (South versus other).
  • At the individual level, the authors controlled for students’ sex, parents’ highest level of education, and students’ score on the Add Health Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The models also controlled for students’ GPA during freshman year of high school. The models of senior-year GPA and 4-year college enrollment included a control for students’ own level of sophomore-year math course taken. For Latino students, they also included in their models whether Spanish was the main language spoken at home and their generational status as background controls.
  • The authors restricted their analyses to schools that had diverse student populations, such that at least 7% of the student body was either African American or Latino, and White and Asian students represented at least 25% percent of the student body. In other words, schools that were homogeneous with respect to race (i.e., all African American, all Latino, or all White) were excluded from the analysis.
  • It is important to underscore that this analysis applies only to high school students who were attending racially diverse schools in the mid-1990’s.
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:Factors Related to STEM Readiness
Archives: K-16 STEM Abstracts