Bienes obtenidos o producidos totalmente en la región

Study Two: Mickelson on Charlotte-Mecklenburg

In 2001, Roslyn A. Mickelson writes Subverting Swann: First and Second

Generation Segregation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools where she examines the impact of ability tracking and desegregation on the academic outcomes of black students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS). In the beginning of her study she differentiates first generation segregation as racial composition of schools within a single school district and

second generation segregation as an imbalance of racial allocation of educational opportunities within schools (Mickelson, 2001, 216).

Mickelson addresses five concerns: the existence of first generation segregation in CMS, the effects of that segregation on educational outcomes, the existence of second generation segregation in CMS, the effects of its existence on educational outcomes, and the extent to which segregated education offers fewer opportunities to learn. She randomly samples CMS high school seniors from the 1996-1997 school year. She stratifies these students into tracks based on their placement in English class. She draws 1,883 students from every high school in the system. She excludes students enrolled in special education classes, special programs, or special schools. She has a fairly representative sample of students based on racial composition (Mickelson, 2001, 225). However, some aspects of her study are highly reliant upon survey data conducted in 1997. This survey includes attitudes on educational and occupational attainment, race, age, gender, and mother and father educational and occupational attainment.

Her dependent variables are four academic performance characteristics: GPA, End of Course (EOC) scores, California Achievement Test (CAT) scores of language in 6th grade, and track placement. The main independent variables include race, gender, and survey data responses on educational and occupational attainment. She also uses other factors like cultural capital, student effort in school, track placement, and prior achievement as control variables. Her longitudinal measurement includes exposure to first and second generation segregation in the form of track placement.

Mickelson uses ordinary least squares (OLS) regression in a multi-level model where students are nested within schools. This allows studying between school and within school

generational segregation effects. She uses the CAT scores and compares them to the twelfth grade EOC scores and track placement in order to derive an effect for growth in achievement. She hypothesizes that blacks and whites of similar academic performance are placed in

different classes where whites experience the more privileged classes and blacks are placed in lower tracks (Mickelson, 2001, 217). She further asserts blacks in these lower track classes receive less rigorous instruction, lower quality resources, and less highly qualified teachers (Mickelson, 2001, 217). Therefore, the efforts to desegregate and better educational outcomes are “subverted” (Mickelson, 2001, 217).

Overall Mickelson’s results show that the top academic classes are overwhelmingly white across subjects and the low performing classes are disproportionately black across subjects. In reference to the five areas of assessment, the results are strong. One, she finds trends in first generation segregation based on historical background. CMS almost reaches unitary status in the 1980s, but isolated schooling increases during the 1990s regardless of the effort to lessen residential segregation. She finds attending racially isolated schools has a negative effect on achievement and track placement (Mickelson, 2001, 229). Her study finds that the more time blacks and whites spend in racially isolated settings, the lower their CAT scores, EOC scores, and track placement. In addition, prior achievement on the CAT is critical for predicting high school GPA, EOC scores, and track placement. In other words, the greater the proportion a high school senior receives his or her elementary education in a segregated setting, the lower are that student’s grades, EOC test scores, and high school track in comparison to similar students who experience desegregated elementary education

(Mickelson, 2001, 231). Black students are rarely found in the top tracks, regardless of the racial composition of a high school and they are disproportionately present in lower tracks

(Mickelson, 2001, 234). When looking within schools that are considered to be racially balanced, placing black students in lower learning tracks resegregates them. Specialized higher learning tracks are predominantly white. Last, racially isolated schools offer fewer teacher resources, have higher counts of homeless youth, more free and reduced lunch students, and students with English as a second language. These schools also have

inadequate materials, resources, and teacher experience. These six factors are tied to tracks. This confirms for Mickelson why black students from racially segregated elementary schools perform less well than others.

One of the shortcomings in her study is the exclusion of special education students. The proportion of black students in the non-special programs is 42 percent of all blacks in the school system (Mickelson, 2001, 226). There are more blacks in specialized programs than there are in the system. This is a misrepresentation of the proportion of black achievement, and therefore, an underestimation of the first and second generation segregation of black students. Second, her analysis is primarily descriptive. She focuses on the results racial opposition and educational opportunities provide more than the effects these variables have on achievement. Last, she references this as a longitudinal study because she considers sixth grade achievement a viable predictor for twelfth grade achievement. The study is more valuable if there are multiple years to address the trends and multiple years can confirm the validity of using sixth grade achievement. This large gap in years does not take into account the route a student takes to grow over time. Since there is not more than one group of students, her findings are specific to that particular group. He study lacks generalizability until another group is studied in the same manner.