Racial, class segregation dominant in US public schools

A new report on US education has underlined persisting racial and class segregation in American public schools despite the country’s vast and still growing multiracial population.

With white students now accounting for merely over half of all students in US public schools, down from four-fifths in 1970, yet whites are consistently concentrated in schools with other whites, while the largest minority groups in the country, African-American and Latino students, remain isolated in classrooms, The New York Times reports, quoting a Wednesday report by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The segregation, according to the report, is not limited to race, since African Americans and Latinos are twice as likely as white or Asian students to attend schools with predominantly poor children.

Nationwide, the report states, 43 percent of Latinos and 38 percent of African-Americans attend schools where fewer than 10 percent of their classmates are white.

The report has further found that segregation of Latino students is most predominant in the three largest American states of California, New York and Texas. Additionally, it adds, that the most segregated cities for African-Americans are Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia and Washington DC.

“Extreme segregation is becoming more common,” said the report’s author Gary Orfield, who is also the co-director of the Civil Rights Project.

Orfield emphasized that schools with generally minority and poor students were most likely to lack adequate educational resources, more assertive parent groups and experienced teachers.

The problem of segregated schools in the US lingers over various discussions on the future of education across the country. Numerous education advocates insist that national policies on how school teachers should be evaluated may further advance segregation in American public schools.

Teacher evaluations that are based on student test scores, for instance, could have unintended consequences, said Rucker C. Johnson, an associate professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Thus, teachers would typically be reluctant to accept 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,” Johnson noted.

The report’s authors also censured the Obama administration for its failure to pursue integration policies, arguing that its support of charter schools was helping to create “the most segregated sector of schools for black students.”