Minority Groups to Emerge As a Majority in U.S. Schools

Changing Face Anyone who wants to glimpse the future of America's school-age population can look to California. Today, a majority of the schoolchildren in the Golden State are members of a minority group. But as the demographer Harold L. Hodgkinson likes to say, "What's happening in California is coming to a high school near you."

Although the minority population will remain concentrated in a relative handful of states, demographers project that all but two states—Arkansas and Mississippi—will see an increase in their minority enrollments between now and 2015.

Today, about 65 percent of the nation's school-age youngsters are non-Hispanic whites. But that figure will drop to 56 percent by 2020 and to under half by 2040. At that point, a majority of school-age children in the United States will be...