Why haven schools continued to desegregate, too?
The increased racial mixing in housing hasn’t been nearly large enough to offset the sheer increase in the ranks of minority schoolchildren. While the number of white elementary school kids remained flat, at 15.3 million, between 1990 and 2000, the number of black children climbed by 800,000, to 4.6 million, while Hispanic kids jumped by 1.7 million, to 4.3 million. The result: Minorities now comprise 40% of public school kids, vs. 32% in 1990. And as the nonwhite population has expanded, so have minority neighborhoods — and schools. So minorities have lost ground? Yes, in some respects. By age 17, black students are still more than three years behind their white counterparts in reading and math. And whites are twice as likely to graduate from college. Taken as a whole, U.S. schools have been resegregating for 15 years or so, according to studies by the Harvard University Civil Rights Project (table). “We’re celebrating [Brown] at a time when schools in all regions are becoming increa
