WASHINGTON
Hispanic students have become more segregated in suburban public schools over the last decade, even while Blacks and Asians have become slightly less isolated, according to a new study.
The report by the Pew Hispanic Center challenges the conventional assumption that growing minority populations will create an instant “melting pot” in suburban and other districts. It raises questions about whether local school boards need to actively promote integration.
“Suburbia has changed, and suburban schools are getting much more diverse,” said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew, a Washington think tank. “But we shouldn’t assume that White suburban students as a result are interacting significantly more with non-Whites.”
The popularity of charter schools, now promoted by President Barack Obama, is a factor behind some of the segregation in grades K-12, Fry and other experts say. This is because many charter schools have special ethnic themes or offer bilingual courses, and minorities are choosing to enroll in schools with classmates of the same race.
The nation’s suburbs added 3.4 million students from 1993 to 2007, representing two-thirds of the growth in public school enrollment. Virtually all the suburban growth came from the addition of Hispanic, Black and Asian students.
But, while Black and Asian students saw small gains in integration, Hispanic students were increasingly clustered at the same suburban schools. The study found their segregation was particularly evident not only in counties around Chicago; Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; and Prince George’s, Md., where their population is small as compared to Blacks and Whites, but also in Hispanic hotspots in the Los Angeles, Miami, and San Diego metropolitan areas.
