The Influence of Educational Segregation on Educational Achievement

The paper investigates the impact of homogeneous vs. heterogeneous grouping of students with respect to their social origin on the differences in educational achievement. There are two competing hypotheses in this respect: heterogeneous grouping increases students’ educational outcomes, or homogeneous grouping is the proper solution for improving students’ achievement. Further hypotheses refer to the conventional beliefs that a.) students with underprivileged parental background benefit from being in heterogeneous schools, or b.) students with privileged parental background perform worse in integrated schools. The paper uses the PISA 2003 data for investigating the consequences of these various possibilities in structural settings. Social background is measured by parental socio-economic status and education. In addition to the main effects of social origin, contextual school level variables are used to investigate the impact of educational segregation. These indicators involve the general level of the school regarding the social and cultural status of the parents. Interaction terms are used to reveal the relationship between students’ parental characteristics and school characteristics regarding level of segregation. Hypotheses about the generally negative impact of school segregation on students’ achievement found some support, while the assumptions on the specific benefits of the underprivileged students or on the specific disadvantages of the privileged students are less supported.