Trajectories of Exposure to Racial School Segregation

• In Event: Issues of Segregation and Disproportionality: Examining Patterns, Explanations, and Consequences

Abstract

Racial school segregation continues in American education today, with larger proportions of students attending intensely segregated minority schools than in the previous 30 years (Orfield 2009). Research documents aggregate trends in segregation, but we know little about how students experience school segregation over time. Building on the life-course perspective, I use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to describe student exposure to school segregation for students during middle and high school. Using finite mixture modeling, I identify distinct trajectories that simultaneously describe the timing, sequencing, and duration of segregation exposure. I then examine why students belong to the trajectories they do, focusing on how school-level changes and individual school mobility decisions affect membership in different exposure trajectories.

Author

• Siri Warkentien, The Johns Hopkins University