A study of Latino students reveals two sides of the segregation debate - The Hechinger Report

A study of Latino students reveals two sides of the segregation debate - The Hechinger Report

A study of Latino students reveals two sides of the segregation debate
Latino students are more isolated but also more evenly spread through schools, researchers say

The immediate coverage of an important July 2019 study on Latino children in America emphasized how they are increasingly “segregated” from white children at school. Reporters at both Politico and Education Week highlighted that the average Latino child doesn’t interact with white children at school as much as he or she used to. By 2010, the nation’s Latino children attended elementary schools where nearly 3 out of every 10 classmates were white, on average, down from 4 out of 10 in 1998.

In 12 years, that’s a big jump in ethnic isolation. For many Latino children, especially those who live in low-income Latino neighborhoods, the limited contact with white peers is more extreme. The nation’s 10 poorest districts, enrolling at least 50,000 students, were already quite segregated in 1998, and they backslid even further by 2010, the study found. (According to separate federal data, 17 percent of Latino students attended a school that was 90 percent or more Latino in 2010, up from 15 percent of Latino students in 1995.) CONTINUE READING: A study of Latino students reveals two sides of the segregation debate - The Hechinger Report