Delineating Differences in How US High Schools are Racialized

Schools’ overt or explicit practices are a dominant lens through which education researchers and policymakers attempt to understand how schools racially inequitable. Yet, Lewis Diamond argue that contemporary racial inequalities largely sustained implicit factors, like institutional structural inequalities. Ray’s framework on racialized organizations similarly outlines our sociopolitical structure becomes embedded in organizations, legitimating perpetuating the hierarchy. We apply illustrative cluster analysis techniques rich data schools, teachers, students from nationally representative High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 find inequities (e.g., student body, sector, average achievement) appear be most salient delineating racialization US high whereas characteristics teachers typically emphasized for closing educational outcomes teacher qualifications, courses offered, stratification practices) not differentiators across schools.