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US schools remain segregated even as student population grows more diverse: Report

Thursday, 14 July 2022 3:41 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 14 July 2022 3:49 PM ]

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found K-12 schools remain divided along racial, ethnic and economic lines.

US schools remain divided along racial, ethnic and economic lines despite the population having grown more diverse thanks to demographic changes and improvements since 2010, according to a report.

The report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found K-12 schools remain divided along racial, ethnic and economic lines, The Hill reported on Thursday.

Researchers found that between 2020 and 2021, around 18.5 million children attended a school where 75 percent or more of the student body were of a single race or ethnicity. About 18.5 million children are more than one-third of the country’s student population. Fourteen percent of these attended schools where 90 percent or more of the student body was of one race or ethnicity.

According to the report, schools in the Midwest and Northeast United States were less diverse, compared with Southern and Western regions.

The report is a follow-up to a similar survey conducted by the GAO in 2016.

Researchers also found “new school districts that seceded from existing districts usually had higher percentages of white and Asian students than districts they left.” These offshoots tended to be wealthier than the remaining districts too.

Around 13,500 majority of same-race/ethnicity schools are located within 10 miles of a predominately same-race/ethnicity school of a different race/ethnicity, authors added. “Of these schools, 90 percent have a different same-race/ethnicity pair in a different school district.”

A majority of Americans support teaching critical race theory (CRT) to high school students and about the implications of racism and slavery in the United States, according to a poll published last year.

Critical race theory is a way of studying the legacy of racism and slavery in the United States and how these forces continue to impact Americans. The educational concept is based on the argument that race is a social construct and that the United States was built on racist structures that exist today.

CRT isn’t widely taught outside of American colleges and universities, but a debate is underway on whether it should be integrated into earlier American education.

Some US lawmakers have opposed teaching CRT in high schools. In addition, Florida, Texas and Oklahoma have created prohibitive legislation on what can be taught in schools.

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