2012 - Students Changing Schools or Students' School Changes: Factors that Shape Trajectories of Exposure to School Segregation

Attribution: Warkenstien, Siri
Researchers: Siri Warkenstien
University Affiliation: John Hopkins University
Email: swarken1@jhu.edu
Research Question:
1) Are there distinct trajectories of exposure to school segregation among a nationally representative sample of public school students?(2) If so, what is the relative importance of student school mobility and school segregation trajectories on membership in each distribution?
Published: 0
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Paper Presented at conference
Journal Entry: Presented at ASA
Year: 2012
Findings:
  • 1) Students begin first grade in schools with different levels of percent black students and finish eighth grade in schools that are almost equally disparate. Students who attend the most racially isolated schools experience a decrease of roughly 10% in the percent black students to which they are exposed. However, students in the least percent black schools experience virtually no change in percent black throughout the eight years.

  • 2) Segregation trajectory of the student’s first grade school is the primary predictor of the child’s own segregation exposure trajectory, net of other covariates.

Keywords: SegregationWhite FlightRegions: NationalMethodologies: QuantitativeAnalysis Methods: Descriptive StatisticsGrowth ModelsMathematical Models Sampling Frame:Students in the US, grades 1-8.
Sampling Types: RandomAnalysis Units: IndividualSchoolData Types: Quantitative-Longitudinal
Data Description:

  • Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten cohort (ECLS-K)

    The sample for the current study includes 6,705 students who attended public school in the 50 states or DC in the first, third, fifth, and eighth grade.

  • DV: Percentage of black students attending the child’s school.

  • IV: Segregation trajectory of the school that the child attended in first grade (stable low black segregation, increasing black segregation, decreasing black segregation, high black segregation), child school mobility (made no school changes, made only non-promotional school changes, made only promotional school changes, made non-promotional and promotional school changes).

  • Covariates: Race, mother’s age at the child’s birth, family poverty status at first grade, whether the family spoke a language other than English at home, parent’s highest level of educational attainment at first grade.

Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:
Archives: K-12 Integration, Desegregation, and Segregation Abstracts