REICE. Revista Iberoamericana sobre Calidad, Eficacia y Cambio en Educación

This research aims to determine whether it is more appropriate to consider school segregation by socioeconomic status of families or by parents' educational level, both in terms of which is higher, and which has a greater relationship with student performance. We did a special exploitation of the census nature database of the Colombian evaluation test SABER 2016. A total of 646,413 5th grade students enrolled in 14,630 schools are analyzed. First, the Gorard Segregation Index and the Hutchens Square Root Index are estimated for nine groups according to the level of education of the parents and others, with equivalent size, according to segregation by socioeconomic level. Second, multilevel models of two levels (school and students) are estimated. On the one hand, the results show that for all minority groups and in both indices, school segregation by socioeconomic level is greater than segregation by parent’s educational level. And, on the other hand, that, although both segregation considerations affect student performance, segregation by socioeconomic level shows a greater relationship. In this way, it is concluded that it is correct to estimate segregation by socioeconomic level at is has been done, rather than by parents' educational level.