By evaluating the school’s contribution to the student performance in isolation, data from the Cleveland Municipal School District suggests that during the 1980s when the district desegregated, its high schools effectively counteracted dropout tendencies for minority students, particularly when students began high school having attended desegregated elementary and middle schools.
Saatcioglu also notes that during the period of desegregation, social factors like poverty, race and family became non-factors. “Minority concentration, poverty concentration and the concentration of single- or no-parent families negatively affected minority students. Hence the substantial increase in the promoting power of the average high school for minorities in the late 1980s,” Saatcioglu writes.
In contrast, during the period of segregation and resegregation, high schools functioned as a major obstacle to success, severely hurting the average student’s chances of graduation.
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