Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Children’s Access to Educational Opportunity in Their Neighborhoods

• In Event: Heterogeneity in Neighborhood Effects on Child Development: An International Perspective

Abstract

Background
Racial and ethnic disparities in access to quality educational opportunities have been an enduring feature of the U.S. social landscape, reflecting and exacerbating inequities and segregation in schools, neighborhoods, and economic and social resources. Given rising levels of economic inequality and income segregation, children of color may face numerous barriers to accessing quality educational opportunities from early childhood through secondary school. This study uses a nationally-representative sample of U.S. young children to identify racial and ethnic disparities in access to quality community-level educational opportunities. Moreover, we assess intersections with families’ socioeconomic resources to consider whether the positive linkages between socioeconomic resources and increased access to quality educational opportunities operate similarly across racially and ethnically diverse children.
Methods
Using a nationally representative sample of U.S. children entering kindergarten (N≈18,150) from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), we assess variation in community-level educational resources for children from early childhood through secondary school. Neighborhood educational measures, derived from the Child Opportunity Index, include the percent of children enrolled in center-based early childhood education programs, levels of 3rd grade Math and English achievement in district elementary schools, and high school graduation rates. Parents reported on socioeconomic status (household income and parent education), as well as family covariates. After multiply imputing missing data, we estimated OLS regression models with clustered standard errors, incorporating sampling weights to ensure that models reflect the population of children entering kindergarten in 2010 in the U.S.
Results
Results (Table 1) identified substantial differences across racial and ethnic groups in neighborhood educational opportunities, with disparities varying by the type of educational opportunity assessed. Considering unadjusted differences, we found that Asian children lived in neighborhoods with higher levels of early education enrollment, 3rd grade achievement, and graduate rates than their peers in most other racial and ethnic groups, with Indigenous children living in neighborhoods with the lowest early education enrollment, and Black children in neighborhoods with the lowest achievement and graduation rates, differences that remained relatively stable after adjusting for family SES and other covariates. Family SES was associated with higher educational opportunity across all three domains, but the strength of associations varied across racial and ethnic groups. Family SES was less positively related to neighborhood-level early childhood enrollment for Indigenous and Black children than their peers, and more strongly associated with achievement and graduation rates for Asian children than other groups.

Conclusions
Results highlight notable racial and ethnic disparities in children’s access to educational opportunity in their neighborhoods, starting from early childhood and continuing through secondary school educational contexts, inequities which were often exacerbated by families’ socioeconomic resources. Notwithstanding the antidiscrimination policy successes in housing and education realms, these results highlight the need for additional levers to assure equal access to quality educational opportunities for all U.S. children.

Authors

• Naoka Carey, Boston College
  Presenting Author

• Rebekah Levine Coley, Boston College