When Do School Districts Emphasize Diversity?: Diversity Content in Mission Statements is Related to School Districts’ Racial Demographics

Abstract

Past work has shown that when educational institutions emphasize the value of racial/ethnic diversity, students of color have higher belonging and better academic outcomes (Celeste et al., 2019). The present work explores which educational institutions tend to do so. Specifically, it investigates whether school districts that emphasize diversity are more likely to serve students of color than White students. To measure school districts’ emphasis on diversity, we collected mission statements from school districts across the country (N = 14,235) and coded them for whether they mention diversity. Using U.S. Department of Education data on student body demographics, we tested the relationship between school districts that emphasize diversity in their mission statements and the racial diversity of the student body. We find that although it is not normative to mention diversity in a mission statement, school districts that tend to mention diversity in their mission statement have higher proportions of students of color. Because mission statements reflect school cultures, these results suggest that White students and students of color in predominantly White schools may be less exposed to ideas about diversity.