The intense segregation that Latino students experience in U.S. schools nearly guarantees that many will not have the opportunity to meet expected academic standards.
Racial segregation is increasing in the United States among African American, Latino, and white students. Paradoxically, as the country becomes more diverse, students are becoming more separated by where they live and go to school. Today, white students are the most segregated of all groups, which places them at a disadvantage in a country in which whites will soon no longer be the racial majority and in which it will be imperative to know how to work and live among diverse groups.
After white students, Latinos are the most segregated student group in the United States. Although the problem of school segregation has traditionally been cast as a black/white issue, today Latinos are more likely than African Americans to attend segregated schools. In 2005–06, approximately 78 percent of Latinos attended predominantly minority schools (from 50 to 100 percent minority), whereas about 73 percent of black students attended similarly segregated schools. More than 60 percent of Latinos living in urban areas in the western U.S. attend schools that are hypersegregated—that is, in which 90 to 100 percent of students are nonwhite (Orfield & Frankenberg, 2008).
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