Friday, June 29, 2012

For white students in suburban Chicago, school has become a much more diverse place in the last 20 years

But the region has seen a jump during that time in the number of highly segregated black and Latino schools. Half of all African American students in the region still go to school in what sociologists would consider “extreme segregation, " in schools where 90% or more of students are African American. Twenty-two percent of all Latino public school students in the eight-county region go to highly segregated schools, a proportion that is growing in the city and the suburbs. The number of Chicago public schools that are 90% or more black has increased in the last 20 years, from 276 to 287. That’s despite a 57,000-student drop in black enrollment in the district. And 71.0% of all CPS black students go to extremely racially isolated schools or more black. In 20 years, that figure has inched down only negligibly, from 73.4%. The number of racially isolated Hispanic schools is up, from 26 to 84. Thirty-nine percent of all CPS Hispanic students go to extremely racially isolated schools. This is up from 20 years ago, when 17% of Hispanics went to such schools. White students have become more concentrated. There are now seven schools that are at least 70% white; 20 years ago there were none. The number of “integrated” schools - schools where no one race makes up more than 50% of the student body - has taken a nosedive, from 106 schools in 1990 to 66 schools today. “No majority” schools used to make up 17.5% of all city schools. Today the proportion is just 9.8%. There has been a dramatic decrease in the number of extremely white schools. In 1990, a third of schools in the metro area were 90% or more white. Today, just 4% are. The number of overwhelmingly white schools dropped from 562 to 103. At the same time, the number of schools where no one race holds a majority has grown across the suburbs. The number of such schools more than quadrupled - from 58 to 280. Racially isolated black and Latino schools are popping up in the suburbs: 10% of all suburban Latino kids and 20% of all suburban black kids attend them, up from 20 years ago. Today, 80% of all white kids living in the suburbs still attend schools that are at least 50% white. That number is down from 90% twenty years ago.

No comments: