School Segregation and Education Inequalities at the Start of Schooling in Brazil

The paper describes patterns of school segregation at the start of formal schooling in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and estimates the compositional effect (school mix-effect) on children's learning in their first two years at school. The concept of school segregation used here refers to the unequal distribution of students sharing specific characteristics within a group of public schools. The study uses the Segregation Index for two characteristics of disadvantage: colour/race and parents' education. Preliminary results suggest that segregation patterns observed in preschool are similar to those in the first year of elementary school.