Latinos are soon expected to become the largest minority in the country; they also attend the most segregated schools. In the 1996-97 academic year 74.8 percent of Latinos were in schools that were more than 50 percent minority, compared with 64.3 percent in 1968-69. More than a third were in schools where the minority population is more than 90 percent. Whites, too, are racially isolated. In 1996- 97, the average white student was in a school that was 81 percent white.
Students in mostly minority schools were much more likely to be poor than students in mostly white schools. That’s important because there’s a strong correlation between poverty and low achievement–and it could mean more bad news in the future for already beleaguered inner-city schools.
