Segregate, Discriminate, Signal: A Model for Understanding Policy Drivers of Educational Inequality

Abstract

Decades after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling banned mandatory race-based separation of students to different schools, school segregation, and inequality in the United States are rapidly increasing. In this research synthesis, I propose a model for explaining how segregation and inequality are formed in urban and suburban school systems and exacerbated even in the absence of formal segregation policy. The model describes segregation as a component in a triangle of discriminatory education policy processes: segregation, discrimination, and signaling. Connecting these three seemingly distinct policy practices could provide a better explanation for the growing inequality in the U.S. school system.

Generating Secondary School Typologies to Investigate STEM Education Inequities

“…Statistical comparisons of schools using census designations based on population density fail to capture features that have great bearing upon educational effectiveness. Using crude criteria such as geographic location can exacerbate inequities through signaling the relative desirability or "goodness" of schools (Mizrav, 2021). In response, we advocate for empirically informed methods for describing and categorizing schools that borrows from similar responses to challenges within studies of biological ecosystems.…”