The Demographic Context of Urban Schools and Districts

Abstract

As the country undergoes tremendous racial transition, this article explores the impact of these trends on the composition of urban schools and districts. The demographic context of urban schools is important to consider because of the body of research that concludes that the composition of students in schools is related to students' academic and non-academic outcomes. In schools consisting of students largely from one race, a diverse teaching staff is one of the few remaining ways to provide students with daily interactions and experiences across racial lines. Although there has been a growth of segregated minority schools that has left many urban schools with few white and middle-class students, there also is variety among urban schools, by size of city and region of the country. Urban schools have more diverse faculties than other schools although racial composition and teacher experience and stability varies by students' racial composition.

Erica Frankenberg is the Research and Policy Director for the Initiative on School Integration at the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA. Her research interests focus on racial integration and inequality in K-12 schools and the connections between school segregation and other metropolitan policies.

Thanks to Genevieve Siegel-Hawley for her helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

1. Sassen (2006) uses the term “global cities” to refer to gentrifying urban areas with a diversified 21 ^st century economic base that attracts white, professional residents while relying on a low-paying, informal labor force that creates a bifurcated economic inequality in close geographic proximity.

2. The location of schools comes from the CCD's locale code, which evaluates each school's location and categorizes them as one of the following eight locales: central city (larger than 250,000 residents); mid-sized central city (smaller than 250,000); urban fringe (e.g., suburban area) of large central city; urban fringe of mid-sized city; large town (larger than 25,000); small town (between 2,500 and 25,000); and rural areas.

3. A recent analysis finds that in neighborhoods with a higher percentage of minority residents, wealthier students attend out of neighborhood schools (private, charter, or magnet schools) at a higher percentage (Saporito & Sohoni, 2006). In metropolitan areas, approximately 16% of all segregation was due to disparities between public and private schools or within private schools in 1999–2000 (Clotfelter, 2004; Reardon & Yun, 2002). Segregation between districts (62%) and within districts (22%) were larger contributors to overall segregation.

4. Suburban schools, by comparison, educated 40% of public school students.

5. Social science research varies as to what percentage of students of a particular group is needed to constitute a non-token presence in a school, or to provide a critical mass. Some estimates have used as low as 5% (Fry, 2007) while others suggest 15%–20% (Linn & Welner, 2007). This research uses 10% in part for continuity with prior segregation studies (Clotfelter, 2004).

6. Of the 64 segregated white schools in the largest urban areas, only five also have a majority of low-income students. As discussed below, the vast majority of segregated minority schools in urban areas have concentrations of low-income students. This difference is another example of how the isolation of white students differs from that of nonwhite students.

7. Mirroring trends among the entire population, higher percentages of black and Latino children are defined as poor, according to the federal poverty guidelines. Analysis of the March 2008 Current Population Survey found that more than one-third of black children in the U.S. were from families below the poverty lines as were 29% of Latino children (Fass & Cauthen, 2008). Only 10% of white children experienced similar poverty.

8. The disproportionately high incidence of child poverty is more likely to affect black and Latino students who go to schools with a higher percentage of these students due to the racial segregation of students described above.

9. Low-income percentage is measured by students who are eligible to receive free- or reduced-fee lunch; “eligible familes” is defined as families whose income is 185% or less of the federal poverty line. There are probably more families whose students would be eligible but do not fill out the relevant paperwork for many reasons: due to the stigma of such a designation (particularly at the high school level), because of lack of information, or because they may be undocumented immigrants.

10. Latino composition figures were not available for 1986, so I substituted 1984 numbers to examine change in Latino percentage over time.

11. A number of scholars have suggested comprehensive reforms for teacher preparation programs that would attract more teaching candidates of color and prepare all candidates to teach in diverse schools (Gordon, 1994; Sleeter, 2007).

12. As student assignment plans that assign students to school on the basis of student race/ethnicity come under legal scrutiny (e.g., Parents Involved, 2007), so have some teacher diversity policies also been legally challenged.

13. Among other personal characteristics such as age, gender, and graduate degrees, urban teachers are similar to all public school teachers (Strizek, Pittsonberger, Riordan, Lyter, & Gruber, 2006). A teacher's own socioeconomic background is an important influence on his or her teaching and perception of students (Morris, 2005), although it is one of the least studied demographic characteristics (Zumwalt & Craig, 2005).

14. The percentage of urban teachers new to their schools in 2003–2004 were: 37.5% in schools with less than 5% students of color; 40.2% in schools with 5–19% students of color; and 43.5% in schools with 20–49% students of color.

15. Some research suggests that student racial composition alone is determinative of teachers' mobility while other research finds that working conditions often associated with racially isolated minority schools are an explanatory factor for mobility.

16. For example, the availability of government-backed loans encouraged moves to developing white suburbs for returning veterans and made it more difficult to get loans in areas near high percentages of minority residents (Massey & Denton, 1993). The passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 prohibited segregative practices and required an affirmative commitment to integrated neighborhoods. Due to the localized practices by private individuals such as realtors and lenders, it is often difficult for home-seekers to know when they have been a target of racially discriminatory practices.