Trends in Rural School Segregation: An Examination of Eastern North Carolina School Districts

Abstract

This paper examines racial and economic trends in rural North Carolina public school districts from the 1998/99 to 2010/11 time period. Existing research on public school demographics has focused on larger metropolitan districts, and the discussion of changing trends in rural counties has been cursory. To further the conversation on rural district segregation, this paper zooms in on a group of 8 counties in eastern North Carolina. In order to measure segregation, dissimilarity indices were calculated using data from the National Center for Education Statistics; separate indices were calculated for racial and economic segregation. The paper performs a regression analysis on the dissimilarity indices over the 1998/99 to 2010/11 time period to measure the trajectory of demographics in the sample counties. Additionally, it compares overall region and county dissimilarity to those within high schools and elementary schools of each county. Separate analyses are performed for economic and racial segregation. The paper concludes that segregation in rural districts is greatly nuanced once the data is disaggregated. The average dissimilarity indices for districts as a whole failed to capture stark differences between primary and high schools. The level of dissimilarity between different counties was highly varied, suggesting that rural district segregation is due to county specific factors. Additionally, the sample counties failed to reveal any strong changes in dissimilarity in the counties other than at the secondary school racial level.