The experience of diversity in schools

Segregation translates to very different school experiences for children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Exposure indices at the national level reveal that white, black, and Hispanic elementary children on average all attend schools where their group is a majority. This typical school experience is represented in Figure 1.

The average white child attends a school that is over 78% white. Only 9% of other children in this typical school are black, 8% Hispanic, and 3% Asian. Though children often do not attend a neighborhood school, the racial composition of schools attended by white kids closely matches that of their own neighborhood.

In sharp contrast, the average black child’s school is more than half black (57%). Hispanic children also are in majority Hispanic schools (57%). And Asians, despite being only 4% of the elementary population, are in schools that average 19% Asian.

Each minority group’s exposure to white children is declining. In 1989-90, 32% of the average black child’s schoolmates were white; that has dropped to 28% in 1999-2000. Similar drops were experienced by Hispanics (from 30% to 25%) and Asians (52% to 46%).