White Students are Now the Minority in U.S. Public Schools

by Grace Chen

 

Increasing birth rates among immigrant families from Asia and Central and South America, combined with lower birth rates among white families, means that for the first time in history, public school students in the United States are majority-minority. This shift in demographics poses difficulties for schools as they work to accommodate children of varying language abilities and socio-economic backgrounds.

It has been an ongoing trend for nearly two decades – while the total number of students in American public schools has risen, the percentage of those students who are white has steadily fallen. According to the Pew Research Center, in 1997, over 63 percent of the 46.1 million U.S. public school students were white. Today, white students comprise just 49.7 percent of the 50 million students enrolled.

These changes in the racial makeup of the nation’s public schools reflect where the overall population is headed. According to recent estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2060, the white population in this country is projected to fall by more than 20 million people, while the Hispanic population is set to double. Black and Asian populations are expected to increase as well, although at rates far slower than Hispanics. By 2043, the nation as a whole is projected to become majority-minority.

Public School Diversity

While the white student population has declined by 15 percent since 1997, according to Pew, both Hispanic and Asian populations have rapidly increased. In that same time frame, Hispanic students have grown by 50 percent to 12.9 million. The number of Asian students has also seen significant growth, jumping 46 percent to 2.9 million students. The African American student population, which will number 7.7 million this fall, has remained relatively steady over the last twenty years.

Much has been made recently of the number of migrant children entering the country and enrolling in public schools. Still, it is actually U.S.-born children of immigrants that account for the explosive growth of the minority student population. The Pew Research Center notes that between 1997 and 2013, the number of U.S.-born Asians increased by 50 percent, while the number of Asian immigrants during that time grew by just 9 percent. Among U.S.-born Hispanics, the number of children between the ages of 5 and 17 jumped by a whopping 98 percent between 1997 and 2013, while immigrant children of the same age actually declined by more than one quarter over the same time period…

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE... (publicschoolreview.com)

 

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