Student Experience Outcomes in Racially Integrated Schools: Looking Beyond Test Scores in Six Districts

Abstract

In this study, we examine eight social and emotional outcomes (e.g., student engagement, sense of belonging) analyzing differences for students who attend racially diverse schools. Drawing on survey responses from roughly 26,000 students, we find that racially diverse schools are associated with more positive social and emotional outcomes for all students. Strikingly, we find that these outcomes are most uniformly positive among white students, whose families have long represented the strongest opposition to systematic racial desegregation. In light of these results, this study has implications for educators, advocates, researchers, and policy makers during a time of renewed attention to school integration.

Segregation, Diversity, and Pathology: School Quality and Student Demographics in Gentrifying New York

“…Integration advocates are quick to point to research demonstrating that school diversity benefits students of color without disadvantaging White students (Johnson, 2019; Schneider et al, 2022; Wells et al, 2016). In doing so, they recognize that advantaged families’ choices about where to send their children to school—and how to interact with the market-based policies that shape these decisions—may be simultaneously motivated by self-interest and influenced by discourses of school quality (Chaparro, 2021; Sattin-Bajaj & Roda, 2020).…”

“…However, these arguments have evolved in the past decade. In fact, many advocates now highlight the social and academic benefits of diverse schools and classrooms for all students (e.g., Schneider et al, 2022; Wells et al, 2016). They are not alone.…”

Majority-minority Educational Success Sans Integration: A Comparative-International View

“…None of this is to deny that occasional integration "successes" occur, or that any number of individuals may have greatly profited from a transfer program or mixed educational setting. From time to time, encouraging evidence of this sort comes to light (Schneider et al, 2021;Wells, 2009). Nor is there any reason to disavow the ideal of integration, one denoting real-versus rhetorical-equality of status, opportunity and power-sharing, rather than merely the formal removal of discriminatory barriers.…”

Segregation, Diversity, and Pathology: School Quality and Student Demographics in Gentrifying New York

“…Integration advocates are quick to point to research demonstrating that school diversity benefits students of color without disadvantaging White students (Johnson, 2019;Schneider et al, 2021;Wells et al, 2016). In doing so, they recognized that advantaged families' choices about where to send their children to schooland how to interact with the market-based policies that shape these decisionsare simultaneously motivated by self-interest and influenced by discourses of school quality (Chaparro, 2021;Sattin-Bajaj & Roda, 2018).…”

“…However, these arguments have evolved in the past decade. In fact, many advocates now highlight the social and academic benefits of diverse schools and classrooms for all students (e.g., Schneider et al, 2021;Wells et al, 2016). They are not alone.…”