Segregated Schools, Segregated Sports: Unequal Sport Offerings in Miami Schools

• In Event: 2166 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 3: Schooling & Race

Abstract

This analysis uses the primary sourced data on school sport offerings in Miami-Dade County high schools to explore the relationship between racial segregation in school and sport offerings. Extracurricular sports are important resources for students, given their effects on socialization, academic achievement, and mobility paths into higher education. Preliminary findings show that although high schools in Miami are racially segregated and few have a mixed student body, there are little differences in the number of sports offered in each school. However, predominately Black schools, compared to Latinx or mixed schools, offer fewer sports per student and less diversity in the types of sports offered. Furthermore, schools with a higher proportion of students in poverty offer fewer sports. These preliminary results indicate that sport offerings are correlated with measures of racial and class segregation in public high schools. Theoretically, the findings illustrate how spatial patterns of racial and class segregation spill over into school resource allocation. Continued analysis is necessary to determine whether these patterns are prevalent throughout the county, and what the “majority minority” city can teach sociologists about unequal resource allocation in segregated schools.

Author

• Brandon Paul Martinez, University of Miami