Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times
Students at F. M. Gilbert
Elementary School in Irving, Tex. Segregation of Latino students is most
pronounced in California, New York and Texas.
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: September 19, 2012
The United States is increasingly a multiracial society, with white
students accounting for just over half of all students in public
schools, down from four-fifths in 1970.
Yet whites are still largely concentrated in schools with other whites,
leaving the largest minority groups — black and Latino students —
isolated in classrooms, according to a new analysis of Department of Education data.
The report showed that segregation is not limited to race: blacks and
Latinos are twice as likely as white or Asian students to attend schools
with a substantial majority of poor children.
Across the country, 43 percent of Latinos and 38 percent of blacks
attend schools where fewer than 10 percent of their classmates are
white, according to the report, released on Wednesday by the Civil
Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.
And more than one in seven black and Latino students attend schools
where fewer than 1 percent of their classmates are white, according to
the group’s analysis of enrollment data from 2009-2010, the latest year
for which federal statistics are available.
Segregation of Latino students is most pronounced in California, New
York and Texas. The most segregated cities for blacks include Atlanta,
Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia and Washington.
“Extreme segregation is becoming more common,” said Gary Orfield, an
author of the report who is co-director of the Civil Rights Project.
The overlap between schools with high minority populations and those
with high levels of poverty was significant. According to the report,
the typical black or Latino student attends a school where almost two
out of every three classmates come from low-income families. Mr. Orfield
said that schools with mostly minority and poor students were likely to
have fewer resources, less assertive parent groups and less experienced
teachers.
The issue of segregation hovers over many discussions about the future of education.
Some education advocates say that policies being introduced across the
nation about how teachers should granted tenure or fired as well as how
they should be evaluated could inadvertently increase segregation.
Teacher evaluations that are based on student test scores, for example,
could have unintended consequences, said Rucker C. Johnson, an associate
professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
Teachers would be reluctant to take assignments in high-poverty,
high-minority communities, he said. “And you’re going to be at risk of
being blamed for not increasing test scores as quickly as might be
experienced in a suburban, more affluent area,” Mr. Johnson said.
The report’s authors criticized the Obama administration as failing to
pursue integration policies, and argued that its support of charter
schools was helping create “the most segregated sector of schools for
black students.”
Daren Briscoe, a spokesman for the Department of Education, said the
Obama administration had taken “historic steps to transform the schools
that for too long have shortchanged the full potential of our young
people and have been unsuccessful in providing the necessary resources
and protections for students most at risk.”
Other advocates for minorities said charter schools had benefited their
communities, even if they were not racially integrated.
Raul Gonzalez, director of legislative affairs and education policy at
the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group, said that
black and Hispanic parents did not necessarily say “I want my kid to be
in an integrated setting.” Instead, he said, “they’re going to say I
want my kid’s school to do better than what it’s doing.”
Todd Ziebarth, vice president of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools,
said he supported more money for transportation to charter schools and
encouraging them to pursue more diversity. But, he said, “if a school is
relatively homogeneous but is performing really well, we should be
celebrating that school, not denigrating it.”
Critics of segregation in traditional public schools and charters said
that there was more to education than pure academics.
“Is it possible to learn calculus in a segregated school? Of course it
is,” said Mark D. Rosenbaum, chief counsel to the American Civil
Liberties Union in Los Angeles. “Is it possible to learn how the world
operates and to think creatively about the rich diversity of cultures in
this country? It is impossible.”
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