Abstract
School diversity has been shown to be associated with students’ school experiences. However, most studies have focused solely on student racial/ethnic diversity, in spite of the multifaceted nature of diversity. This study assessed how the combined influence of student and teacher racial/ethnic diversity and socioeconomic diversity were related to race-based victimization, school connectedness, and racial/ethnic disparities of these outcomes. The participants were Asian, Black, Latinx, and White students (n = 100,408; 46.2–53.5% female) in Grade 7 to Grade 12 attending 278 public schools in California. The participating schools’ diversity contexts were categorized into four latent profiles differentiated by varying levels of student and teacher racial/ethnic diversity and socioeconomic diversity. Race-based victimization was the least prevalent in schools with low student racial/ethnic diversity, low socioeconomic diversity, and moderate teacher racial/ethnic diversity. The magnitude of racial/ethnic disparities in race-based victimization differed across the four latent profiles; racial/ethnic disparities were minimal when there were similar numbers of students in each racial/ethnic group. School diversity’s relation with school connectedness was minimal. White students perceived higher school connectedness than other racial/ethnic groups across profiles, but the White-Latinx gap was smaller in profiles with schools having a homogeneous Latinx student population. The findings underline the importance of understanding school diversity’s interaction with students’ characteristics, particularly racial/ethnic identity, on students’ school experiences.