Bleak picture for minority kids in public schools
Class discipline and opportunities uneven
More than a decade into the 21st century, minority students still face educational opportunities starkly different from those of white students, including harsher discipline and lowerpaid, less-qualified teachers, according to new federal data from every public school in the USA.
In some cases, disabled students also face harsher consequences, especially in crisis situations.
The new data are being released today in Washington, D.C., by Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder.
The Education Department says that for the first time since 2000, the Civil Rights Data Collection survey includes findings from every U.S. public school, comprising about 49 million students. Among the findings:
Among high schools serving the highest percentage of Afri- can-American and Latino students, one in three don’t offer a single chemistry course, and one in four don’t offer a math course more advanced than Algebra I.
In schools that offer “gifted and talented” programs, AfricanAmerican and Latino students represent 40% of students but only 26% of those in such programs.
African- American, Latino, American Indian and Alaska Native students attend schools with higher concentrations of firstyear teachers than do whites.
Students with disabilities are more than twice as likely to be suspended than those without.
Black students are suspended and expelled at a rate more than three times as high as white students (16% vs. 5%).
Even in preschool, black pupils represent just 18% of students in public preschools, but account for 48% of those receiving more than one suspension.
“The report shines a new light on something that research and experience have long told us — that students of color get less than their fair share of access to the in-school factors that matter for achievement,” said Daria Hall of The Education Trust, an advocacy group for low-income and minority students.
Browse the data at ed.gov/ocr.