Students' Attachment and Academic Engagement: The Role of Race and Ethnicity

  • The authors examined whether students of different racial-ethnic groups vary in attachment and engagement and whether properties of schools (ex. racial-ethnic composition) influence these outcomes over and above individual characteristics.
  • At the individual level, African Americans are more engaged than White and Hispanic students.
  • Hispanic students are more attached than are other groups.
  • The student racial-ethnic composition is related to attachment but has no effect on engagement and behaviors, once other school factors are controlled for.
  • Students who attend schools w/higher proportion of students of their own race-ethnicity are more attached to schools. This was not the case for engagement.
  • None of the school level variables explains why the effect of race-ethnicity on attachment and engagement varies across schools.
  • The authors conclude that the racial-ethnic composition of schools does not produce the variation in the effect of race-ethnicity on attachment and engagement. The school effects were small. Only a limited portion of the total variance in each outcome could be attributed to school factors of any kind.