Low-Income Students and the Socioeconomic Composition of Public High Schools

Y

22

High Schools; Low Income Groups; Socioeconomic Status; Socioeconomic Influences; Science Achievement; Mathematics Achievement; Parents; Educational Attainment; Psychological Patterns; Mental Health; Poverty; Urban Schools; Suburban Schools; Rural Schools; Family Structure; Self Concept; Depression (Psychology); Social Isolation; Racial Differences; African Americans; Hispanic Americans; Whites; Dropouts

10.1177/000312240907400502

0003-1224

Increasing constraints placed on race-based school diversification have shifted attention to socioeconomic desegregation. Although past research suggests that socioeconomic desegregation can produce heightened achievement, the "frog pond" perspective points to potential problems with socioeconomic desegregation in nonachievement domains. Such problems are important in their own right, and they may also chip away at the magnitude of potential achievement benefits. In this article, I report conducted propensity score analyses and robustness calculations on a sample of public high schools in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. As the proportion of the student body with middle- or high-income parents increased, low-income students progressed less far in math and science. Moreover, as the proportion of the student body with middle- or high-income or college-educated parents increased, low-income students experienced more psychosocial problems. Such patterns were often more pronounced among African American and Latino students. These findings suggest curricular and social psychological mechanisms of oft-noted frog pond effects in schools and extend the frog pond framework beyond achievement itself to demographic statuses (e.g., race/ethnicity and SES) perceptually linked to achievement. In terms of policy, these findings indicate that socioeconomic desegregation plans should also attend to equity in course enrollments and the social integration of students more generally. (Contains 1 footnote, 9 tables, and 2 figures.)

As Provided

72

ED547260

2010

EJ889356