Contexts of Elementary School Segregation and Children’s Social Development (Poster 30)

• In Event: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

School segregation is one of the most pervasive instantiations and perpetuators of education inequity in the United States. Although the country is becoming increasingly racially and ethnically heterogenous, schools remain and are increasingly homogenous. The U.S. is also facing rising income and wealth inequality, which is exacerbating economic school segregation. It is important to understand the consequences of school segregation for children’s development, particularly in elementary school, an understudied but critical period when children are most likely to experience segregation. This study examines associations between school segregation and children’s social development, and whether these associations differ across children’s racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, in a nationally representative sample of ≈16,000 children from third through fifth grade. In particular, this study explores social outcomes rarely considered in segregation research–including children’s prosocial behavior, school belonging, loneliness, stress, and social anxiety. Data come from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011), Segregation Index (SegIndex), and Stanford Education Data Archive 4.1 (SEDA). Merging these sources provides a novel opportunity to explore how school segregation at the school, district, and county levels relates to individual child-level development. The more researchers, policymakers and educators learn about how school segregation shapes children’s social development in elementary school, the better equipped they will be to design equitable strategies for integrating U.S. schools in ways that promote positive social development.

Author

• Lorraine Reese Blatt, University of Pittsburgh