In both high- and low-minority public schools, the majority of students reported that when they work hard at school, their teachers praise their efforts. In addition, they reported that they make friends with students from other racial and ethnic groups.

This indicator examines how public school 10th-graders perceived their school’s learning and social environment in the spring of 2002. When asked about their school’s learning environment, the majority of students reported that teachers praised their efforts on schoolwork (63 percent), and that students did not feel “put down” by teachers (87 percent), but that students often got away with misbehavior (53 percent) (see table 29-1). There were no discernible differences in the percentage of students who reported these perceptions between high- and low-minority schools. About half of 10th-grade students in all public schools reported that disruptions by other students did not interfere with their learning (53 percent). However, students in low-minority schools were more likely to report this perception than students in high-minority schools (59 vs. 44 percent).

When asked about their school’s social environment, the majority of students reported that students made friends with students of other racial and ethnic groups (90 percent), and that students did not often feel “put down” by other students (83 percent) (see table 29-2). The percentage of students who reported these perceptions was not measurably different in low- and high-minority schools. In contrast, the percentage of students who reported that fights often occurred between different racial/ethnic groups and the percentage who reported not feeling safe at school differed between low- and high-minority schools, with the percentage agreeing increasing from low- to high-minority schools.

Among students of the same race or ethnicity, differences were found between high- and low-minority schools in four of the eight student perception measures. For example, White and Hispanic students in high-minority schools were more likely to agree with the statement that misbehaving students often “get away with it” than their counterparts in low-minority schools. Asian/Pacific Islander, White, and Hispanic students in high-minority schools were more likely to report that fights often occur between different racial/ethnic groups than their peers in low-minority schools. The opposite was true for Blacks.