Integrated schools benefit students.

• Position: YOUR LIFE - Brief article

Middle-school students are more likely to feel safer, less bullied, and not as lonely when they are in ethnically diverse schools, maintains a study by UCLA psychologists. The researchers compared a variety of classrooms with lower and higher diversity among African-Americans, Asian and Pacific Islanders, Caucasians, and Latinos.

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Over the past 30 years, the nation has seen a quadrupling of the number of five- through 17-year-olds who come from ethnic backgrounds other than Caucasian. "The skills needed for young people to successfully negotiate today's increasingly global economy can best be developed through exposure to very diverse people, cultures, and points of view," the study contends. "Diversity benefits everyone; in fact, it is critical in contemporary America ... where the...