As Latino children entered elementary schools this fall, they were likely to encounter fewer White students than they would have a generation ago, based on a recently published academic study. However, the same research found that low-income students of all racial groups were more likely to share classrooms with middle-class pupils than in previous decades.
A team of seven researchers from three universities published findings in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association, stating that school segregation worsened for Latino children compared with a generation ago while economic integration of poor students across races improved unexpectedly.
Titled “Worsening School Segregation for Latino Children?” the July 29 article is based on research conducted by scholars from the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Maryland and the University of California, Irvine.
“Overall, we find intensifying segregation of Latino children from White peers among schools in districts that enroll at least 10 percent Latino pupils; this [is] set against already high levels of racial isolation,” the article states.
An overall increase in the Hispanic population in the U.S., as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been accompanied by a growth in the Hispanic student population. From 1996 to 2016, the number of Hispanic students enrolled in schools, colleges and universities in the United States doubled from 8.8 million to 17.9 million, according to Aug. 28, 2017 Census Blogs at census. gov.
Hispanic students now make up 22.7 percent of all people enrolled in school.
Rethinking integration policies
