Education

Study: Diversity in Suburban Schools Has Grown

By Mary Ann Zehr — April 01, 2009 1 min read
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Suburban schools have become more diverse overall since the 1993-94 school year, according to a study released yesterday by the Pew Hispanic Center. But the exposure of the average white student in individual schools to other students who are of a different ethnic or racial background has increased only slightly. For example, the study found that the average white suburban student attended a school in which 75 percent of students were white in the 2006-07 school year; in the 1993-94 school year, the student body would have been 83 percent white on average. See the Associated Press story and USA Today story on the report.

The report by Richard Fry, a senior research associate for the center, shows that overall the nation’s black and Asian public school students are slightly less isolated now than they were in the 1993-94 school year. But the country’s Hispanic public school students are more segregated than they were then.

Various local news organizations picked up on this report yesterday. An article in the Orange County Register notes that the Placenta-Yorba Linda and the Garden Grove unified school districts in California made the list in the report for the nation’s top 25 suburban school districts with the highest segregation. The Florida Times Union reported that Clay County schools are becoming more ethnically and racially diverse.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Learning the Language blog.