Navigating the Transition to Multi-Ethnic Urban High Schools: Changing Ethnic Congruence and Adolescents’ School-Related Affect Aprile D. Benner and Sandra Graham University of California, Los Angeles This short-term longitudinal study investigated 918 students’ school-related affect across the transition to high school. The study focused specifically on the moderating effect of change in student ethnic congruence from middle to high school. Results indicate that students experiencing more ethnic incon- gruence from middle to high school, in particular African American and male students, reported declining feelings of school belonging over time. Moreover, students experiencing ethnic incongruence also had increasing worries about their academic success. These results suggest that the chan- ging school demographics from middle school to high school may nega- tively impact students’ school-related affect, especially if they move to high schools which include fewer students who are ethnically similar to themselves. As they move from childhood to adulthood, adolescents negotiate a variety of transitions (e.g., pubertal onset, changes in peer networks), and it is within this developmental backdrop that students must navigate the middle to high school transition (Eccles, Lord, & Midgley, 1991; Steinberg, 2002). As students move to high school, they encounter a new (and often larger) school, teachers who may be less available, more challenging classes, older students, and new social cliques. For many students, entry JOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON ADOLESCENCE, 17(1), 207–220 Copyright r 2007, Society for Research on Adolescence Requests for reprints should be sent to Aprile D. Benner, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, Box 951521, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1521. E-mail: abennerp@ucla.edu