Poster #29 - Associations Between District-Level School Segregation and Children’s Proximal Social Development in Elementary School

• In Event: Poster Session 10

Abstract

De facto school segregation is one of the most pervasive instantiations and perpetuators of inequity in the United States (Johnson, 2019). While the U.S. is becoming increasingly racially/ethnically heterogenous, schools are increasingly homogenous (Frankenberg et al., 2019). Rising income inequity is also exacerbating socioeconomic school segregation (Fahle et al., 2020). Extant research highlights school segregation’s negative impacts on learning opportunities, academic skills development, and educational attainment (Reardon et al., 2019). We know much less about the impact on children’s social development. Evidence suggests school integration may promote cross-ethnic/cross-income friendships and positive intergroup attitudes, leading children to experience more school safety and less loneliness and victimization in more diverse schools (Chetty et al., 2022; Graham, 2018). However, evidence also suggests that minoritized and or low-income students may experience diminished engagement, valuing of learning, positive affect, and perceived social status in diverse schools (Odgers & Adler, 2018; Schneider et al., 2022). Children are most likely to experience school segregation in elementary school and these experiences lay the foundation for subsequent development (Greenberg & Monarrez, 2019). Consequently, due to mixed empirical/theoretical support, it is important to examine associations between school segregation and social development with a nationally representative sample of elementary students. This paper examines associations between district-level school segregation and children’s proximal social development in 3-5th grade. Child-level data come from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: 2011. Social development is measured via child reports of interest/competence in peer relationships, peer victimization, prosocial behavior, behavioral engagement, peer social support, perceived school safety, and stress about school. District-level data come from the Stanford Education Data Archive 4.1 (Reardon et al., 2021). Socioeconomic, white-Black, and white-Latinx segregation are operationalized with information indices measuring the average deviation of students’ school diversity from the district-wide diversity (Theil, 1972). Table 1 includes descriptive information on the sample and variables included in analyses. We ran multi-level regressions in Stata 17, accounting for observations nested within children and children nested within schools. Regressions controlled for child race/ethnicity, gender, and receiving free- or reduced-price lunch; and district urbanicity, size, and socioeconomic status. Results (Figure 1) showed more district-level white-Black school segregation was associated with less interest/competence in peer relationships, peer victimization, prosocial behavior, and more stress about school. White-Latinx segregation was associated with less interest/competence in peer relationships and prosocial behavior. Socioeconomic segregation was associated with more peer victimization and less peer social support. No school segregation measures significantly predicted behavioral engagement or perceived school safety. These preliminary findings suggest school segregation may be harmful for social development in elementary school. One possible explanation for null findings and the unexpected finding of white-Black segregation negatively predicting peer victimization is that associations differ for children depending on their race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. For example, district-level white-Black segregation likely relates to white and Black children’s peer victimization differently. Thus, future analyses will examine how interactions between school segregation and children’s own race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status are associated with social development.

Authors

• Lorraine Reese Blatt, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, University of Pittsburgh