Measuring and Explaining High School Interracial Climates

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Abstract
Social researchers and school officials “know” that race relations are better in some schools than others but have not been able to measure or explain these variations. In this paper, we propose one method for measuring schools' “interracial climates” and examine the extent to which variations in these climates are related to schools' racial compositions, rates of change in their racial compositions and the social and academic status of black and white students. The results suggest that rates of racial change have the most effect, followed by students' social and academic status arrangements. Racial composition (measured in terms of racial balance) seems to have little or no predictable effect.