The Effects of Integration and Class on Black Educational Attainment

Integration, perhaps one of the most important issues in education today, has never been examined from the framework of the status attainment model. This paper utilizes a national longitudinal sample of black and white male youths to assess this question: How does the educational attainment process differ for blacks in segregated and integrated schools? I find that the model improves substantially as a prediction instrument for blacks in integrated schools, thus adding yet another argument to the many that already exist for the worth of integration for black education. In the course of the analysis, a deeper, equally important issue for black education, emerges. Ifind strong evidence for a class split within the black population wvhich exists independently of integration or segregation. Furthermore, this class split has ill effects for lower class black educational attainment. Evidence for any similar split in the white sample is not uncovered.