Equity & Diversity

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

September 27, 2000 5 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print
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.

Children of Change

Children of Change: Overview
School-Age ‘Millenni-boom’ Predicted
For Next 100 Years
Minority Groups To Emerge
As a Majority in U.S. Schools
Mixed Needs of Immigrants Pose Challenges for Schools
High Poverty Among Young Makes Schools’ Job Harder
About This
Series

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 members of “minority” groups.

“Clearly, the term ‘minority’ will become anachronistic very soon,” argues Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, a co- director of the Harvard Immigration Project. “It’s already anachronistic in California, where there is no single majority group.”

The largest growth will occur among Hispanics. Between 1999 and 2010, Hispanics are projected to account for 43 percent of U.S. population growth. The Hispanic school-age population is predicted to increase about 60 percent in the next 20 years; and by 2025, nearly one in four school-age youngsters will be Hispanic.

Coming to a County Near You

Minority Population on the Rise

A New Minority?

A Sign of the Times

The Asian and Pacific-Islander population will also increase by about 64 percent over the next 20 years, but starting from a much smaller base. The proportion of the school-age population that is Asian non-Hispanic is estimated at 4 percent in 2000 and is projected to rise to 6.6 percent in 2025. Meanwhile, the percentage of the school-age population that is African-American or Native American is predicted to remain relatively stable.

Are the public schools prepared for the growing diversity? Probably not. “From an educational standpoint, the states in general, and certainly mine, in particular, have really not prepared for this influx of new students,” says Sonia Hernandez, the deputy superintendent of curriculum and instruction for the California Department of Education, “not just in sheer numbers, but also in the special needs that they bring to the classroom.”

Those needs, she says, include linguistic challenges, structures to move children into the mainstream curriculum, recruitment of minority teachers, and outreach to parents.

In 1998, according to a survey by the federal Education Department, only one in five public school teachers said they felt prepared to address the needs of students with limited English proficiency or from diverse cultural backgrounds.

‘Fanning Out’

As with anything else, however, diversity is not evenly distributed across the country. As Hodgkinson points out, just 220 of the nation’s more than 3,100 counties account for about 80 percent of the diversity in American schools today. And the projections are that California, Florida, New York, and Texas will continue to handle most of the nation’s multiethnic, multiracial population well into the future.

“I have a friend in South Dakota, he’s a superintendent,” remarks Hodgkinson, “and he declared last year ‘ethnic diversity year,’ and said that every student in his schools was going to have one black friend. Well, that meant every black student was going to have to have 298 white friends.”

But while the bulk of diversity will likely remain concentrated in a small number of states and relatively few counties, the spilling out of immigrants and new ethnic groups across the landscape will be pervasive enough that many districts will have student enrollments that are noticeably different from those in the past.

“If you look at the Latino population of the United States, historically it’s been hyperconcentrated in five states: California, Texas, Illinois, New York, and Florida,” says Suarez- Orozco of Harvard University. “Yet, if you turn to other parts of the country, you really see the beginnings of a transformation that is simply unprecedented in U.S. history.”

In Alabama, he notes, the number of students with limited English proficiency grew by 429 percent from 1990 to 1997, the most recent data available. In Kansas, the number grew by 205 percent; in North Carolina, by 440 percent; in Kentucky, by 208 percent.

“So what we see is a real fanning out from the traditional regions of the country, through secondary migrations and sometimes through primary migration, into the Sun Belt, into the South, into the Midwest,” says Suarez-Orozco, “places that really, traditionally, didn’t see Spanish-speaking children in these numbers.”

Two of the forces driving interstate migration are jobs and the quality of life. The Omaha, Neb., public schools have seen their population of limited-English-proficient students soar from 500 in 1992 to at least 3,000 this school year. In addition to Hispanics, the community has a sizable population of Nuer immigrants from southern Sudan, who fled their country’s civil war.

“We have a lot of beef-packing plants in Omaha,” explains Susan M. Mayberger, the assistant supervisor of English-as-a- second-language programs for the 45,000-student district. “We have a very low unemployment rate, and housing costs that are lower than in other parts of the country.” Once families arrive, friends and relatives soon follow.

To address the needs of its evolving enrollment, the Omaha district is training teachers and paraprofessionals to work with students whose primary language is not English. About 25 paraprofessionals, many of them bilingual, are also involved in a career-ladder program to become teachers.

—Lynn Olson

Related Tags:

Events

Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Privacy & Security Webinar
Navigating Cybersecurity: Securing District Documents and Data
Learn how K-12 districts are addressing the challenges of maintaining a secure tech environment, managing documents and data, automating critical processes, and doing it all with limited resources.
Content provided by Softdocs

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Equity & Diversity Teacher, Students Sue Arkansas Over Ban on Critical Race Theory
A high school teacher and two students asked a federal judge to strike down the restrictions as unconstitutional.
2 min read
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signs an education overhaul bill into law, March 8, 2023, at the state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark. On Monday, March 25, 2024, a high school teacher and two students sued Arkansas over the state's ban on critical race theory and “indoctrination” in public schools, asking a federal judge to strike down the restrictions as unconstitutional.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signs an education overhaul bill into law, March 8, 2023, at the state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark.
Andrew DeMillo/AP
Equity & Diversity Opinion What March Madness Can Teach Schools About Equity
What if we modeled equity in action in K-12 classrooms after the resources provided to college student-athletes? asks Bettina L. Love.
3 min read
A young student is celebrated like a pro athlete for earning an A+!
Chris Kindred for Education Week
Equity & Diversity Girls Are Falling in Love With Wrestling, the Nation's Fastest-Growing High School Sport
A surging number of states have sanctioned the sport, with bolstering from various groups.
6 min read
Benton's Callie Hess, left, battles Plum's Saphia Davis, right, during the first found of the PIAA High School Wrestling Championships in Hershey, Pa., on March 7, 2024. Girls’ wrestling has become the fastest-growing high school sport in the country.
Callie Hess, left, battles Saphia Davis, right, during the first round of the PIAA High School Wrestling Championships in Hershey, Pa., on March 7, 2024. Girls’ wrestling has become the fastest-growing high school sport in the country.
Matt Rourke/AP
Equity & Diversity What's Permissible Under Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Law? A New Legal Settlement Clarifies
The Florida department of education must send out a copy of the settlement agreement to school boards across the state.
4 min read
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis answers questions from the media, March 7, 2023, at the state Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla. Students and teachers will be able to speak freely about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms under a settlement reached March 11, 2024 between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged a state law which critics dubbed “Don't Say Gay.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis answers questions from the media, March 7, 2023, at the state Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla. Students and teachers will be able to speak freely about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms under a settlement reached March 11, 2024, between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged the state's “Don't Say Gay” law.
Phil Sears/AP