Print | Close this windowU.S. school segregation on the rise: reportWed Jan 14, 2009 5:22pm ESTBy Matthew BiggATLANTA (Reuters) - Black and Latino students are educated in U.S.schools that are increasingly segregated, said a report Wednesday thatundercuts optimism about race in America surrounding the presidency ofBarack Obama.Blacks and Hispanics are more separate from white students than at anytime since the civil rights movement and many of the schools they attend arestruggling, said the report by the Civil Rights Project at the University ofCalifornia.A 2007 Supreme Court decision on voluntary desegregation is likely tointensify the trend because it reduces pressure on local authorities topromote school desegregation, said the report, which called on Obama toaddress the issue.Obama, who will take the oath of office Tuesday, will be the county's firstblack president."It would be a tragedy if the country assumed from the Obama election thatthe problems of race have been solved, when many inequalities are actuallydeepening," said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project.Orfield said these trends were "the result of a systematic neglect of civilrights policy and related educational and community reforms for decades."Part of the reason is demographic. As the percentage of white studentsshrinks -- they now make up 56 percent of the school population -- they aremore integrated with students who are nonwhite.Another factor is that residential segregation, on the rise in many parts ofthe country, increasingly determines the racial composition in schools in theabsence of measures by education authorities to create and maintainintegrated schools, Orfield said.At the same time, Orfield said little had been done in recent years toprosecute violations of the Fair Housing Act, which forbids discrimination inthe allocation of housing and was set up to foster equality in the housingmarket.As a result of the trend, 39 percent of black students and 40 percent ofstudents from the fast-growing Latino minority are increasingly isolated inschools in which there is little racial mixing, the report said.Evidence that U.S. schools are becoming less racially integrated is politicallycharged because school integration was a basic goal of the civil rightsmovement led by Martin Luther King in the 1950s and 1960s.That movement was in part triggered by a landmark Supreme Courtdecision in 1954 that decreed school segregation in the South wasinherently unequal, did irreversible harm to black students and violated theconstitution.The report also found that the average black and Latino student is now in aschool that has nearly 60 percent of students from families who are near orbelow the poverty line.Schools marked by racial segregation and poverty tend to have weakerteaching forces, more student instability and a higher percentage ofstudents from homes where English is not spoken -- factors that militateagainst academic achievement.U.S. school segregation on the rise: report | Reuters.comhttp://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USTRE50D7CY200901141 of 2 1/15/2009 12:57 PM(Editing by Tom Brown and David Wiessler)© Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content fromthis website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution ofThomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without theprior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and its logo are registered trademarks ortrademarks of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world.Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation anddisclosure of relevant interests.U.S. school segregation on the rise: report | Reuters.comhttp://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USTRE50D7CY200901142 of 2 1/15/2009 12:57
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