Group: Diversification of suburban school districts not always apparent
The influx of black, Hispanic and Asian students into suburban school districts during the past 15 years has not necessarily integrated individual school buildings, according to a report released Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.
The report states that the number of nonwhite students enrolled in suburban school districts across the country jumped by 13 percentage points in that time span, from 28 percent of the overall student body in 1993-94 to 41 percent in 2006-07.
At the level of the individual suburban school, though, the increase is more modest. The report states that the typical white suburban student attended a school in 2006-07 that was 25 percent nonwhite, up from 17 percent in 1993-94, an increase of 8 percentage points.
In short, the report finds that much of the growth in nonwhite students takes place in school buildings that already serve a high percentage of minorities.
"There's no doubt that suburban school districts are getting more diverse," said Richard Fry, a senior research associate at the Pew Hispanic Center and the author of the report. "But when you look at whether white and nonwhite students are actually rubbing shoulders inside the individual buildings, you see that things haven't changed as much."
The danger that arises when students of different racial or ethnic backgrounds don't attend the same schools is that one group might be forced to attend schools that aren't as good as the other group's, the report states. In addition, Fry said there's research that shows that when students interact inside their schools with classmates of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, the academic performance of all can improve.
The Pew Hispanic Center is a nonpartisan research group that studies the growth and impact of the Hispanic population in the United States. It is a project of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C.
The findings in the Pew report probably won't surprise many school district leaders from the suburbs of Chicago. Local districts with growing minority populations, especially those that use the neighborhood school concept, often find that such growth doesn't affect their individual schools equally.
Consider the three high schools in Maine Township High School District 207. The student body at Maine East in Park Ridge is 45.2 percent white and 32.4 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, according to the 2008 school report card. Maine West in Des Plaines is 56.8 percent white and 29.5 percent Hispanic. Maine South in Park Ridge is 88.3 percent white.
A similar disparity exists in the two elementary schools in Mount Prospect-based River Trails Elementary District 26. The student body at Euclid Elementary School is 67 percent nonwhite (Hispanics alone make up nearly 44 percent of the school population), according to the most recent state report card. At Indian Grove Elementary School, nonwhite students make up slightly less than 24 percent of the student body.
Other cases exist throughout the suburbs. The challenge in these cases is to tailor services for the students in each specific building while keeping the districts' overall service level equitable, local school leaders said.
"Because of things like language issues, the buildings that serve a high proportion of minority students usually require much more support," said Ken Wallace, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in District 207. "For example, we've set up family centers at East and West to assist newer immigrants as they transition to life here. The idea is to ensure that minority students can devote as much attention to their education as any other student."
What happens in suburban schools from here on out stands to be an important focus of national education leaders. The Pew report, available at pewhispanic.org, says that since 1993, two-thirds of the 5.1 million increase in public-school enrollment across the country has occurred in suburban school districts.