Achievement gap widens as Latino enrollment grows
Racial and economic segregation at issue
LOS ANGELES — The segregation of young students from low-income families due to climbing Latino enrollments, and the departure of white and middle-class families has worsened nationwide over a 15-year period, contributing to wider achievement gaps along economic and racial lines, a new study concludes.
In 2000, the typical child from a family living below the poverty line attended an elementary school where 45% of students were from middle-class families. By 2015, that figure was 36% nationwide, according to a University of California, Berkeley and University of Maryland study. Researchers compared data for elementary school students at more than 14,000 school districts nationwide over a 15-year period, ending in 2015.
“The growing segregation of the haves and have-nots” is concerning in light of other research indicating that students from low-income families make less academic progress as they “come to dominate district enrollments,” said study director Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley.
Other research has noted that learning gaps among students have widened during the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit harder in low-income, predominately Latino and Black communities.
In Los Angeles, white flight wasn’t a significant factor during the study, having occurred decades earlier in the nation’s second-largest school system, which has 450,000 students. In 2000, the base year of the study, a Latino child in L.A. Unified was likely to attend school with about 5 white students per 100. That number was unchanged in 2015, the final year of the study. Similarly, in 2000, an L.A. student from a low-income family was likely to attend school with 13 middleclass students per 100. By 2015, the number was 14 students per 100.
Among the state’s largest school systems, Los Angeles was the most isolated, Fuller said. In the study, ‘isolation’ referred to the lack of racial, ethnic or income diversity.
In L.A. Unified — 3 in 4 students are Latino and 4 in 5 are from low-income families. Among the state’s largest school systems, L.A. had the least economic diversity, according to the study, which found patterns of increasing segregation 68 years after Brown v. Board of Education unanimously outlawed segregated schools.
School systems moving toward racial or economic isolation during the study include those in Des Moines; Montgomery County, Maryland; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; and Akron, Ohio.
In Akron, in 2000, a student from a low-income family was likely to be in a school where 26% of students were middle-class. By 2015, that number had dropped to 10%.
Across the nation, forced integration has faded in rulings and legislatures, as have voluntary integration plans based on race.
L.A. Unified continues to operate under a court-ordered desegregation plan that dates back to the 1960s. For decades, the integration has been voluntary, based on attracting students by offering special academic, or “magnet,” programs, and free transportation.
The success stories include the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies or LACES in Mid-City. Enrollment is 33% Latino, 27% white and 19% Black in a school system that is 74% Latino, 10% white and 8% Black. At LACES, 53% of students qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch because of low family income, compared with 80% districtwide.
Although intended largely to boost white enrollment, magnet schools in L.A. Unified draw mainly from Latino and Black students. At the well-regarded King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science in Willowbrook, 1% of students are white.
Fuller said racial and economic isolation will add one more burden as schools work to help students. “As educators and policymakers help families recover from the pandemic, they must confront the impact of this shift in American society: The isolation of children who already start out way behind,” Fuller said.
He said he worried that “more tutors and one-off summer school will not narrow achievement gaps driven by worsening segregation of poor children. These are the result of deeper shifts in housing patterns, inaction by educators and the ongoing flight of wealthier families.”
But researchers did reason for hope: “Several metropolitan areas host schools that increasingly integrate children with varying economic means, thanks to shifting housing patterns and pro-active efforts by local educators.” About 800 school districts nationwide have rising Latino enrollments with little evidence of white flight.