Racial diversity and academic test scores in public elementary schools

ABSTRACT

This article examines the effect of racial diversity on academic achievement using panel data on San Francisco’s public elementary schools from 2003 to 2007. Theories argue that the relationship between racial diversity and academic achievement may be positive or negative. Few studies have examined the effect of racial diversity in US elementary schools. Fixed effects models are used to examine the relationship between racial diversity and academic performance in elementary schools. Controls for student differences and teaching staff differences are added as part of the education production function literature. Results show that racial diversity has little effect on academic achievement scores.

KEYWORDS:

• Racial diversity
• academic performance

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I20
• I28

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ All errors and opinions are the responsibility of the author and do not express the opinions or policies of the SFUSD.

² The ethnic groups are self-reported as Latino, White, African American, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, American Indian, Filipino and Other non-White. Other non-White generally refers to Southeast Asians. There is a tenth category which is not included in this analysis, ‘declined to state’ which poses problems for constructing the diversity measures as it is a nontrivial percentage that is growing with time.

³ According to the 2000 Census, there were approximately 80,000 children between the ages of 5 and 18 living in San Francisco (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06075.html). The SFUSD had an enrolment of 60,000 children in grades K-12 in 2000 (http://orb.sfusd.edu/profile/pf00/pf00-100.htm). Thus, approximately 25% of the children in San Francisco were not enrolled in public schools in 2000.