| Erin Maher
Indiana University
A multi-level analysis of the influence of school organizational features on student achievement in the desegregation context
FINAL REPORT:
Several decades after Brown vs. The Board of Education and in the wake of current legislation dismantling mandatory desegregation, we still know relatively little about if and how desegregation affects achievement. This project examines the effects of secondary school context and organization on student achievement and the racial distribution of achievement under desegregation. In so doing, I test several theoretical propositions about the effects ofdesegregation on student achievement. Using a national sample of students and schools from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey and a measure of court-ordered desegregation status constructed from two additional data sources, I employ multilevel modeling techniques to measure the early effects of secondary schools on both average achievement and the size of the African-American achievement gap. My achievement outcomes include student test scores and grades for two primary subjects. In particular, I assess the following features of schools and their interactions with desegregation status on these outcomes: average school socioeconomic status and achievement, amount of teacher conflict, percent black students, proportion minority teachers, features of a school's tracking structure, and school restructuring practices. In general, my results support institutional theories of integration. Schools with high average SES are associated with a smaller racial achievement gap, regardless of desegregation status, controlling for students' individuai social class background. In addition, I find some significant joint effects of desegregation status and school context and organization on the achievement outcomes for students overall and black students in particular. For instance, in general, the comprehensiveness of a school's tracking structure under desegregation has a negative effect on student achievement and increases the size of the racial achievement gap. Use of cooperative learning, however, reduces the size of the racial achievement gap under desegregation for more than one of the achievement outcomes. The implications of these findings for student achievement and the racial achievement gap in the desegregation context are explored. An institutional ideological framework for understanding school effects under desegregation is advanced.
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