Creating Climates for Positive Racial/Ethnic Interaction: School and Individual Factors in American High Schools

• In Event: Socializing Youth for Success: The Role of Schools, Teachers, and Parents in Students’ Educational Perceptions

Abstract

The physical structure and social-emotional climate of schools can create a setting in which students can be empowered or disempowered to participate in their surroundings. The structure of the school, student perceptions of the school, and student characteristics and demographics all conspire to create the interracial/interethnic climate that all students must learn, interact, and hopefully grow within. In the current study hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to estimate both individual- and school-level factors that might contribute to students’ perceptions of racial/ethnic conflict. The present analyses include a total of 11,230 students nested within 539 schools from the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS) 2002 wave. The outcome variable in the analyses assessed students’ perceptions of racial/ethnic conflict in their schools. Level-1 predictors representing individuals within schools included variables such as sex, race/ethnicity, school program, and SES (quartiles). At the school level (level 2), variables representing means based on aggregated level-1 data included mean SES and proportion of nonwhite students per school. Additional level-2 variables came from surveys completed by school administrators and include variables such as school type, urbanicity (urban vs. suburban/rural), school enrollment, and school racial tension.
The analysis progressed from an ANOVA, to individual-level predictors, and finally, level-2 predictors being entered. ANOVA results showed that there were significant differences in perceptions of racial/ethnic conflict between school with a high reliability estimate (λ = .865). The intraclass correlation revealed that 27% of the total variance in the outcome was between schools. Student expectations and perceptions of rule enforcement were significant at level-1. At level-2, larger school size, public schools, urban schools, more building security, and lower SES all predicted higher levels of perceived racial/ethnic conflict across the sample of schools. In the full model, the between-school variance was reduced to 15.9%. Results confirmed hypotheses: increased ethnic heterogeneity and personal intergroup contact was related to more positive interracial climate perceptions within high schools. The findings from this paper infer that school environments are a dynamic influence of student perceptions. From physical structure to opportunities for interracial contact, school settings interact with student qualities to either create a safe or hostile learning venue.

Authors

• Amir Germain Francois, University of Virginia

• Joanna Lee Williams, University of Virginia