While racial and ethnic segregation in the nation’s schools is strongly correlated with gaps in academic achievement, the income level of students’ families in a school rather than its racial or ethnic composition account for those gaps, according to a new study.
The study, based on massive amounts of data from schools attended by nearly all of the nation’s black and Hispanic students, was conducted by Sean Reardon, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, and other researchers from Stanford, Pennsylvania State University and St. John’s University in New York City.