Population datasets and social inequality: Measuring disparity in educational opportunities

• In Event: 4167 - Section on Children and Youth Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Children & Youth Roundtable 7: Educational Disparities

Abstract

Social science and its systematic scientific thinking and analysis provides a venue to question social norms of historical and systemic segregation and discrimination. This study discusses how the use of population datasets, like the education datasets collected by the Office of Civil Rights, can be used to investigate patterns of social injustice especially among small, under-represented groups that may otherwise have “too small of an ‘n’” to be analyzed or discussed in sample-based datasets. Large scale datasets allow for some persistent patterns of inequality, inequity, and disparities to be demonstrated, especially with oversampling to address these concerns. Population data, however, ensure representation. This paper outlines the procedures using a case of high school curricula opportunities of AP course enrollments and test-taking to represent the segregation in learning opportunities among American high school students. This paper measures the amount of disparity in the curriculum using a version of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) which does well to estimate the amount of “market share” certain subgroups of students have over the Advanced Placement curriculum in the US. It also does well to adjust the “moving denominator” of the sequence in this college pipeline trajectory. This aspect of the measure advantages it over other more commonly used measures of inequality, like the Gini coefficient.
These findings dovetail with the educational studies on resegregation of educational opportunities as well as the current research regarding the unequal learning experiences of students in American high schools. It complements studies on within-school segregation by moving the discussion forward to understand the between-school and between-district learning opportunity differences that are becoming the new approach to stratifying education and shines a policy light on the growing racial disparities left in education that were not addressed under Brown v. Board of Education.

Author

• Heather E. Price, Marian University