Segregation worsening in U.S. schools, study finds
‘Isolated’ facilities had fewer math, science courses and more students who were held back
“There simply can be no excuse for allowing educational apartheid in the 21st century.”
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.
America’s public schools — 62 years after the Supreme Court’s historic Brown v.
Board of Education decision — are increasingly segregated by race and class, according to new findings by Congress’ watchdog agency that echo what advocates for low-income and minority students have said for years.
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigators found that from the 2000-2001 to the 2013-2014 school year, both the percentage of K-12 public schools in high poverty and the percentage with mostly African-American or Hispanic students grew significantly, more than doubling, from 7,009 schools to 15,089 schools. The percentage of all schools with socalled racial or socioeconomic isolation grew from 9% to 16%.
Researchers define “isolated schools” as those in which 75% or more of students are of the same race or class.
Such schools, investigators found, offered disproportionately fewer math, science and college-prep courses and had higher rates of students who were held back in ninth grade, suspended or expelled.
What’s more, GAO investigators found, public charter schools, a key strategy in improving education for such students, may take minority and poor students from larger more diverse public schools and enroll them into less diverse schools.
Overall, Hispanic students tended to be “triple segregated” by race, economics and language, investigators found.
The report, requested by Congress in 2014, on the 60th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of
Education decision that struck down the “separate but equal” laws that segregated schools, was released Tuesday, on its 62nd anniversary.
U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D - Mich., one of two lawmakers who requested the study, said it “confirms what has long been feared and proves that current barriers against educational equality are eerily similar to those fought during the civil rights movement. There simply can be no excuse for allowing educational apartheid in the 21st century.”
The segregation findings are not new to civil rights advocates, who have said for years that U.S. schools are splintered by race and class. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA reported this week that even as the number of minority students in U.S. public schools has grown over the past three decades, diversity has taken a hit in many schools. It noted that the percentage of “hypersegregated schools, in which 90% or more of students are minorities, grew since 1988 from 5.7% to 18.4%.
GAO investigators recommended that the U.S. Department of Education analyze the civil rights data it collects to “further explore and understand issues and patterns of disparities.”
In a letter responding to the findings, Catherine E. Lhamon, the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said it already does this, “both internally and for external consumption.” Lhamon said the report had prompted the department to consider whether it could do more analysis of the data.