School segregation

School segregation is the division of people into different groups in the education system by characteristics such as race, religion, or ethnicity.[1][2][3][4]

Before the mid-20th century, racial segregation in public schools was legally enforced in many parts of the United States, particularly in the South.[5] Although the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education ruled that mandated school segregation was unconstitutional, progress towards integration was not immediate.[5] Black students, especially in the South, would continue to attend predominantly Black schools for more than a decade after the ruling, while White students attended schools with a majority of white people.[5] Supreme Court decisions like Green v. County School Board of New Kent County in 1968 started to mandate school desegregation and forced schools to implement measures to accelerate racial integration.[5]

Influence on Health Disparities

School segregation is one of the various indicators of racial health disparities that holds the strongest predictors of health inequality compared to residential segregation.[6] This is stemmed from different outcomes of school segregation in regards to health, such as homicides, early passings, diseases, mental illnesses, as well as infant mortality.[6] The different variables that come into play when discussing the outcomes of school segregation are be due to the inequality in exposure to resources in education, placing students who would be benefit from those resources to rely on other means.[7]

In Michael Sigel and Vanessa Nicholson-Robinson's article concerning the association between residential and school segregation in racial health disparities, those with higher levels of school segregation act like a driver for higher health gaps.[6] A study was conducted under them in the finding that many countries have stepped away from school desegregation during the 1990s through legal rulings, causing long-term changes that are represented in the health data of those people who are later affected from it.[6]

Research has shown that school segregation has measurable health consequences, where several structural factors, such as systemic financial discrimination, institutional racism, and contingent behaviors, interact to produce various health disparities among populations.[8] These effects appear to occur from individualistic variables like peer prejudice or behavioral norms, but through structural inequality.[8] Education has been linked with life expectancy, where barriers to education would, in turn, result in diminished health and lower life expectancies.[9] Desegregation of schools elevates the education level in black children, which correlates with an association between school segregation and reduced life expectancies.[9] Amongst the Black population, estimates suggest that completing high school is associated with nearly a decade difference in life expectancy, and that exposure to education in desegregated schools compared to segregated schools was linked to higher chances of graduation.[9]

See also

By country

References

  1. ^ "New types of religious state school deepen segregation". The Economist. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
  2. ^ Meatto, Keith (2 May 2019). "Still Separate, Still Unequal: Teaching about School Segregation and Educational Inequality". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
  3. ^ Smith, Alan (2001). "Religious Segregation and the Emergence of Integrated Schools in Northern Ireland". Oxford Review of Education. 27 (4): 559–575. doi:10.1080/03054980120086248. ISSN 0305-4985. JSTOR 1050786. S2CID 144419805.
  4. ^ Johnston, Ron; Burgess, Simon; Wilson, Deborah; Harris, Richard (2006). "School and Residential Ethnic Segregation: An Analysis of Variations across England's Local Education Authorities" (PDF). Regional Studies. 40 (9): 973–990. doi:10.1080/00343400601047390. S2CID 154437860. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-11-05. Retrieved 2021-01-09.
  5. ^ a b c d Reardon, Sean F.; Owens, Ann (2014-07-30). "60 Years After Brown: Trends and Consequences of School Segregation". Annual Review of Sociology. 40 (1): 199–218. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-071913-043152. ISSN 0360-0572.
  6. ^ a b c d Siegel, Michael; Nicholson-Robinson, Vanessa (April 2025). "Association Between Changes in Racial Residential and School Segregation and Trends in Racial Health Disparities, 2000–2020: A Life Course Perspective". Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. 12 (2): 1278–1297. doi:10.1007/s40615-024-01960-y. ISSN 2197-3792. PMC 11914365. PMID 38421509.
  7. ^ Reardon, Sean F. (September 2016). "School Segregation and Racial Academic Achievement Gaps". RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. 2 (5): 34–57. doi:10.7758/RSF.2016.2.5.03. ISSN 2377-8253.
  8. ^ a b Schwartz, Gabriel L.; Chiang, Amy Y.; Wang, Guangyi; Kim, Min Hee; White, Justin S.; Hamad, Rita (2023-10-01). "Testing mediating pathways between school segregation and health: Evidence on peer prejudice and health behaviors". Social Science & Medicine. 335 116214. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116214. ISSN 0277-9536. PMC 11062255. PMID 37716183.
  9. ^ a b c "Sage Journals: Discover world-class research". Sage Journals. doi:10.1089/heq.2021.0121. PMC 8985537. PMID 35402768. Retrieved 2026-02-28.


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