Segregation Prominent in Schools, UCLA Study Finds
Segregation has become far more common in schools across the country, with white students concentrated in schools with other whites and African-American and Latino students attending classrooms with a majority of children who are poor.
Those are the findings of a report compiled by the Department of Education and an analysis by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The report says that despite declining residential segregation for Black families and large-scale movement to the suburbs in most parts of the country, “school segregation remains very high for Black students.”
Across the nation the typical Black student is now in a school where almost 2 out of every 3 classmates, about 64 percent, are low-income, nearly double the level in schools of the typical white or Asian student, which stand at 37 percent and 39 percent, respectively.
New York, Illinois and Michigan consistently top the list of the most segregated states for African-American students. Among the states with significant Black enrollments, Blacks are least likely to attend intensely segregated schools in Washington, Nebraska and Kansas.
In addition, the report indicated that Latino students “are attending more intensely segregated and impoverished schools than they have for generations.”
“The typical Latino student in the region attends a school where less than a quarter of their classmates are white; nearly two-thirds are other Latinos; and two-thirds are poor,” the report states. “California, New York and Texas, all states that have been profoundly altered by immigration trends over the last half-century, are among the most segregated states for Latino students along multiple dimensions.”
It also states that the pattern of intensified segregation has become most dramatic in the western portion of the United States.
BET National News - Keep up to date with breaking news stories from around the nation, including headlines from the hip hop and entertainment world. Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.
(Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
