Changing Diversity in U.S. Schools

Abstract

Schools in the United States have experienced changes in their demographic profile during the last half century. During this changing time, schools have experienced court-involved desegregation and have experienced fluctuations in their populations with regard to both race and socioeconomic status. Existing studies on segregation have focused primarily on Black and White students, neglecting the increasing Hispanic population of U.S. schools. This study provides more data to the expanding research on the impact of diversity on student performance. The study examines whether diversity and teacher quality of a school can predict academic performance on state-mandated tests, while controlling for school level poverty. In this quantitative study, the researcher also analyzes whether a difference exists between the predictability of pass rates and advanced pass rates for African American, Hispanic, and White students in Virginia’s elementary schools. The data reveal that the impact of poverty is difficult to disentangle from the issues of diversity and teacher quality but that differences exist among student racial groups in their academic performance response based on school-level poverty, diversity, and teacher quality.