The UCLA Civil Rights Project has just released E Pluribus … Separation: Deepening Double Segregation fo More Students, which analyzed data from the National Center for Education Statistics and found that segregation is growing based on both race and poverty. According to the report, 15% of black students and 14% of Latino students attend “apartheid schools” across in the country–schools in which whites make up 0-1% of the enrollment. Though whites make up just over half of the nation’s enrollment, the typical white student attends a school where three-quarters of peers are white.
The research shows that segregation is substantially increasing for Latino students across the country but most significantly in the West. For for black students, segregation also remains very high and is most severely growing in the South.
Segregation in public schools has been linked to a number of problems that affect the achievement of minorities. Schools with a big majority of students who live in poverty have higher dropout rates, fewer experienced teachers, and far less resources than schools with majorities of middle- and upper-class students. The studies note that expert teachers and advanced courses more common in predominantly white and/or wealthy schools help create educational advantages over minority segregated settings.