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87 Soc. F. 1913 (2008-2009)
Schools or Neighborhoods or Both - Race and Ethnic Segregation and Educational Attainment

handle is hein.journals/josf87 and id is 1937 raw text is: Schools or Neighborhoods or Both?
Race and Ethnic Segregation and Educational Attainment
Pat Rubio Goldsmith, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Whites, blacks and Latinos in the United States tend to live in
different neighborhoods and attend different schools. Does this
segregation influence youth in the long run? This study used
longitudinal data from the NELS to see whether neighborhoods'
or schools'proportion black and/or Latino during the high school
years influences educational attainment through age 26. The
analyses indicate that concentrations of blacks and Latinos in
schools, but not zip code areas, associates with lower attainment
in the long run. Students in predominantly black and Latino
schools are less likely to earn a high school diploma or equivalent
and to earn a bachelor's degree or more than similar students in
predominantly white schools.
The latter half of the 20th century featured a powerful civil rights movement,
dozens of successful legal challenges to segregation and the enactment
of numerous laws to reduce segregation, but whites, blacks and Latinos
still tend to live in different neighborhoods and attend different schools.
School segregation levels are high and continue to rise. Recent data show
that 72 percent of blacks, 76 percent of Latinos, but only 11 percent of
whites, attend schools where half or more of the students are not white
(Frankenberg, Lee and Orfield 2003). Residential segregation also remains
high. Data from the 2000 U.S. Census indicate that 62 percent of blacks
and 48 percent of Latinos would need to move to eradicate neighborhood
segregation in metropolitan areas (Charles 2003).
Policies and practices that promote integration are controversial. Recent
court decisions have weakened school desegregation requirements
(Orfield 1996) but endorsed the principle of diversity in university
admissions (Grutter v. Bollinger 2003). Some research has suggested that
the general public values integration, but in-depth interviews with whites
and studies of white flight have indicated that most whites are unlikely to
freely integrate with blacks and Latinos (Bonilla-Silva 2001; Massey and
Denton 1993; Orfield 1996; Renzulli and Evans 2005).
This research was supported by a grantfrom the American Educational Research Association,
which receivesfundsfor its AERA Grants Program from the U.S. Department of Education's
National Center for Education Statistics of the Institute of Education Sciences, and the
National Science Foundation under NSF Grant #RED-0310268. Direct correspondence to
Pat Rubio Goldsmith, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Department of Sociology, Bolton
778, RO. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201. E-mail: goldsmit@uwm.edu.

C The University of North Carolina Press

Social Forces 87(4): 1913-42, June 2009

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