Students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds face negative perceptions about their academic potential (Smith, C. A. (2005). School factors that contribute to the underachievement of students of color and what culturally competent school leaders can do. "Educational Leadership and Administration: Teaching and Program…

Although the United States Supreme Court declared segregation in education under law unconstitutional in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the public high schools in Jackson, Mississippi, would remain segregated until 1970. The present study examines the effects of this social climate on the high school band programs in…

Two of the goals of elementary school are to help students to develop a healthy sense of identity and learn social communication skills. However, there are many factors figure into students' experience during their early years of school. Othering by the other sex is one of these factors, especially in Saudi Arabia, which has just sex-desegregated…

Since 1990, over 40% of schools have closed in the St. Louis Public Schools District (SLPSD) because of steep enrollment decline. Tracing educational trends over 30 years, I examine when, where, and why K-12 public schools closed in St. Louis in order to highlight the social conditions and policy decisions that contract contemporary urban…

The history of education for African Americans in the United States is one of struggle largely due to laws that forbade the education of enslaved Africans. Resultingly, education exists in a broader system of oppression. Historically, school desegregation displaced many Black teachers and administrators and ultimately forced Black professionals…

This is a longitudinal study of the change in the academic achievement gap between African American and European American students from elementary to high schools with large administrative data from a school district in the United States. Analysis of variance between eight tracks of students defined by the school environment of isolated schools or…

In the second half of the twentieth century, the ranks of Black teachers and school administrators declined precipitously. Today, less than 7 percent of American teachers are Black. This loss has had a number of consequences for schools and communities, but perhaps especially for Black students. As recent research has found, Black students benefit…

In the early 1990s, the Supreme Court established standards to facilitate the release of school districts from racial desegregation orders. Over the next two decades, federal courts declared almost half of all districts under court order in 1991 to be "unitary"--that is, to have met their obligations to eliminate dual systems of…

This article reviews the literature evaluating the impact of school choice programs on racial integration. Evidence on the impacts of magnet schools, voluntary busing programs, open enrollment practices, charter schools, and voucher programs is reviewed. The literature is mixed on this question, finding that the impacts of choice on racial…

This research explores the historical development of African American teacher and principal hiring and placement in Columbus, Ohio, from 1940 to 1980. In 1909, the Columbus Board of Education established Champion Avenue School creating a de facto segregated school to educate the majority of African American children and to employ Black educators.…

Schools do not receive much recognition within urban sociological research for the role they perform in shaping the demographic, structural, and social features of neighborhoods, cities, and metropolitan areas. In contrast, this article links schools, and the racial avoidance that operates through educational policy, to the extreme economic…

Despite existing research that demonstrates the benefits of racial diversity in education, the Court has become increasingly disinclined to allow the use of race or ethnicity in education policy targeted to increase race/ethnic diversity, absent a compelling state interest. The debate over the merits of educational diversity has almost exclusively…

Summarizing my prior work, the only book length treatment of the "acting White" phenomenon (Buck, 2010), I argue that while desegregation was both a moral necessity and a social good, the manner in which desegregation was implemented by White authorities led indirectly to today's achievement gaps. In the course of desegregation…

We examine the impact of charter schools on school integration in the Little Rock, Arkansas metropolitan area. We find that charters are less likely to be hyper-segregated than traditional public schools (TPS), but TPS have compositions more closely reflecting the region. However, differences in each case are slight. Using student-level data to…

Using structural equation modeling, this study examined the effects of peer environments on collegiate interracial friendship and how such effects vary by students' race. The results show that the peer environment of Greek life mediated the relationship between structural diversity and interracial friendship in college, in that students…