Family Structure, Schoolmates, and Racial Inequalities in School Achievement

This study examines the influence of schoolmate family structure, racial concentration, and socioeconomic status on the academic achievement of individual African American and White students. The data are drawn from the 1990 test results of 18,000 10th graders who took the Louisiana Graduation Exit Examination. The study finds that being surrounded by schoolmates from female-headed families had the second largest negative association with the academic achievement of African Americans, greater in effect than the association of academic achievement with individual family structure. It appears that the negative effect of concentrations of African Americans in schools may be largely attributed to the association of minority concentration schools with high percentages of female-headed families. Key Words: academic achievement African Americans family struture, two-parent families, mothers. Despite a narrowing of the gap in educational attainment between African American children and White children, there are still disturbing inequalities in the educational outcomes of the two major racial groups in the United States. According to a 1994 report of the U.S. Department of Education, African Americans are at a disadvantage in preschool attendance, grade retention, academic achievement, dropout rates, parental involvement, school climate, course-taking patterns, educational aspirations, labor market outcomes, and adult literacy patterns (p. 9). Not only do African American and White children have unequal outcomes from their school years, they often spend these years in different educational and familial environments. According to the National School Boards Association, about two thirds of African American school children were attending segregated schools in the 1990s (Orfield Bridge, Judd, Caldas Rumberger & Willms, 1992). …