From the Pew Hispanic Center: Sharp Growth in Suburban Minority Enrollment Yields Modest Gains in School Diversity

Press Release
March 31, 2009
For Immediate Release

Contact:
Mary Seaborn
info@pewhispanic.org
202-419-3606
or
Paul Fucito
pfucito@pewresearch.org
202-419-4372

Sharp Growth in Suburban Minority Enrollment Yields Modest Gains in School Diversity
The student population of America's suburban public schools has shot up by 3.4 million in the past decade and a half, and virtually all of this increase (99%) has been due to the enrollment of new Latino, black, and Asian students, according to an analysis of the most recent public school data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. Once a largely white enclave, suburban school districts in 2007 educated a student population that was 41.4% non-white, up from 28% in 1993.

Despite the sharp rise in the racial and ethnic diversity of suburban district enrollments overall, there has been only a modest increase in the racial and ethnic diversity of student populations at the level of the individual suburban school. For example, in 2007, the typical white suburban student attended a school which had a 75% white student body; in 1993, this same figure had been 83%.

When it comes to changes in the geographic locus of minority education, the suburbs are where most of the action has been over the past decade and a half. In 1993 city school districts educated a majority of the nation's minority students. That is no longer the case. The movement of minority students into suburban schools has had the overall effect of slightly reducing levels of ethnic and racial segregation throughout the nation's 93,430 public schools.

The report also examines the changes since 1993 in individual suburban school districts. It lists the suburban school districts that have had the fastest growth in minority enrollment, as well as those with the highest levels of racial/ethnic segregation.


The report, "The Rapid Growth and Changing Complexion of Suburban Public Schools," authored by Richard Fry, Senior Research Associate, Pew Hispanic Center, is available at the Pew Hispanic Center's website, www.pewhispanic.org.

The Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, is a nonpartisan, non-advocacy research organization based in Washington, D.C. and is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.