Comparative Perspectives on School Segregation

This book examines various aspects of school segregation and their complex interrelations with policy, structure, and context in diverse settings. It advances the understanding of the causes, processes and consequences of school segregation around the globe.

Topics examined include student sorting between schools in marketized systems; the effects of school socioeconomic segregation on international tests of student achievement and the structures that shape cross-national variations; the impact of school choice on school segregation in Canada; school segregation and institutional trust in Chile; racial/ethnic and socioeconomic segregation in Brazil; and parental financial contributions as a cause and consequence of school segregation in Australia. The contributions highlight how selective schooling, private schooling, school funding, school choice, and school competition interact to shape school segregation, as well as the consequences of school segregation on a range of student outcomes. Through its embrace of diversity of methodological approaches, context and focus, this book stimulates new lines of research in an important and growing field.

Comparative Perspectives on School Segregation will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of comparative education, educational leadership and policy, educational research, ethnic studies, research methods, economics of education, sociology of education, history of education and educational psychology. The chapters included in this book were originally published as a special issue of Comparative Education.

Laura B. Perry is Professor of Comparative Education and Education Policy at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. Her research focuses on educational disadvantage and inequalities, especially as they appear between schools, and the systems, structures and policies that shape them.

Emma Rowe is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Deakin University. She was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar (2020) and is a recipient of the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Grant (DECRA) 2021–2024. Her research is interested in policy and politics in education.

Christopher Lubienski is Professor of Education Policy at Indiana University, and a Fellow with the National Education Policy Center. His research focuses on education policy, reform, and the political economy of education, with a particular concern for issues of equity, access, and evidence use in policymaking.