Effect of racial segregation on proficiency of Brazilian elementary school students

Abstract

Recent research has found that black students have worse performance than white students on standardized cognitive tests. Racial segregation is frequently pointed out as one of the main factors behind this situation in the international literature. We studied the effects of racial segregation on the black–white score gap for 5th-grade students in Brazil. Even after the inclusion of several control variables, we found that the higher school racial segregation is, the higher the score differential between white and black students.

Keywords

• School proficiency
• Racial segregation
• Race