This article examines how schools' racial and ethnic mix of students and teachers influences black, white, and Latino students' occupational expectations, educational aspirations, and concrete attitudes. Findings from multilevel-model analyses of data from the National Education Longitudinal Study show that Latinos' and blacks' beliefs are more optimistic and more pro-school in segregated-minority schools, especially when these schools also employ many minority teachers. Further analyses indicate that the positive effects of segregatedminority schools on blacks' and Latinos' beliefs reduce the black-white and Latino-white gaps in achievement. These findings suggest that teachers and administrators in segregated-white schools need to address how they lower minority students' beliefs and that segregated-minority schools can be improved by hiring many minority teachers.

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This paper examines why African Americans and Whites participate in different high school sports at different rates. Considered are explanations based on family, neighborhood, and school inequality as well as explanations stemming from two race-relations theories (competition theory and the cultural division of labor perspective) that see racial differences in culture as a product of racialized norms that vary in strength across settings. Data from the NELS and the 1990 Census are analyzed by mixing multinomial logistic regression with multilevel models. Results indicate that racial differences in sports that Whites play more are largely the result of SES and neighborhood inequality. Differences in sports Blacks play more have strong race effects. Moreover, racial differences are larger in schools with proportionately more Blacks and in schools with more racial hierarchy, providing partial support for both race-relations theories.

Latinos are a large, highly segregated minority group achieving less than whites in school, but the extent to which segregation is responsible for their relatively low achievement is not well known. The effect of proportion Latino on educational achievement is often assumed to be identical to the effect of proportion black. I use the NELS to test this assumption. Results reveal that segregation concentrates disadvantages for Latinos and blacks, but surprisingly, proportion Latino tends to positively influence test scores over the high school years. Proportion black, in contrast, does not affect test scores except for a negative effect for blacks in science. Integration of Latinos with whites would reduce some of the inequalities between schools, it would not hurt and in some areas would help the test scores of whites, but it would hurt Latinos unless some of the helpful features of predominantly Latino schools could be copied.