Orfield, Gary, and Chungmei Lee. The Civil Rights Project, “Why Segregation Matters: Poverty and Educational Inequality.” Last modified January 2005. Accessed February 22, 2014. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED489186.pdf.

Segregation has been a big issue surrounding educational inequality for a long time, and segregation in schools had been increasing since the 1980s (until 2005, the time this article was written). However, some people believe segregation is irrelevant and that all schools can be made equal with the right programs. However, there is very little evidence that shows “separate but equal” in schools can work on a large scale, and the authors believe it is not possible. This study looks at the affects of poverty and segregation on academic achievement and graduation rate.

This article’s topic is educational inequality, more specifically, it focuses on segregation and its effects on overall student performance. The research question here is: Does poverty segregation and racial inequality have an affect on school performance?

There were several types of data used to answer this question in-depth. First, public school enrollment by race for each region was looked at. The authors then showed readers proof that Latino enrollment has been increasing in several U.S. states. Racial composition of schools was also looked at in the context of the race of the student that attended them. The percentage of students in each racial group was also presented for schools dominated by minority students and schools dominated by white students.

Moving onto economic factors, the percent of poor students, by race and year, in schools attended by the average student was examined. In this case, poor students are considered students who qualify for either free or reduced lunches. In addition, the distribution of public school students by poverty for 2002 to 2003 was studied. Then, racial composition of low poverty, high poverty, and extreme poverty schools for the same time period was analyzed. Furthermore, these compositions were examined even more closely by region. Then, graduation rates for the largest central city school districts, metropolitan countywide districts, and suburban districts were studied.

The author’s used the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) common core of data to gather their various data. The authors looked at percentages and ratios to find patterns in the data, including whether some data show increases or declines in certain results. They try to find national trends using the data. They also use the Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI), which is a method of calculating completion rates to estimate the probability of a student graduating on time.

This article is very thorough and uses an impressive amount of data to research and support its claims. The recommendations are well though-out and detailed, so it would be possible for someone to apply them after reading this article, although they could be difficult to apply. Overall, this research was important and interesting, and offered detailed evidence to support its argument that segregation is a relevant factor that needs to be taken into consideration during the creation of policy.