Texas Students' College Expectations: Does High School Racial Composition Matter?

This article explores the association between school racial composition and students' expectations to graduate from a four-year college. In addition to the individual characteristics of students that have been repeatedly shown to influence educational goals, the results indicate that both school socioeconomic level and achievement composition are related to expectations. The results also suggest the counterintuitive finding that in similar schools, students in schools with greater concentrations of minority students are more likely to expect to attain a four-year college degree than are students in schools with lower proportions of minority students.