A September report from the University of California, Los Angeles’ Civil Rights Project, Extreme Segregation and Policy Inaction in California Schools, found that the state’s school remain deeply segregated by race and class, contributing to educational inequities.
The report begins by explaining its methodology is based on the “basic groups used nationally”: white, Asian, Black, Latino and Native American Indian, though the researchers acknowledge there is considerable in-group diversity.
This segregation is contributing to an opportunity gap that feeds into persistent achievement gaps evident in California student test scores.
“In today’s California, there are two relatively large and identifiable advantaged groups, white and Asian, and three disadvantaged groups, including Latino, Black, and American Indian communities,” the report states. “Segregation among groups with varying levels of advantage is a key predictor of inequitable resources and outcomes. The advantaged groups tend to attend high-achieving middle-class schools and often in contact with each other, while the other groups largely attend schools with substantial concentrated poverty.”
While in the past, desegregation was triggered by violations of the law, contemporary desegregation “is increasingly about educational efforts … And desegregation efforts are about using local and state policies to reach equitable goals, not court mandates that are increasingly limited within our current legal framework.”
The report reviews California’s deeply segregated past, including highlighting the landmark Mendez v. Westminster School District of Orange County in 1946, which led to the integration of Latino students in their local schools.
Further, “only in the civil rights era was the issue of segregated education seriously considered in California education policy. In the 1960s and early 1970s, state law was clarified, and desegregation cases were brought in major districts, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. Most
California desegregation cases were brought under state law decisions, including in big cities like San Diego and Los Angeles because of favorable state law not requiring proof of violations and defining desegregation as an obligation of school districts,” according to the report.
The report states that although the state still has extremely high levels of school segregation, policymakers have virtually ignored the issues since the 1980s.
Current status
Between 1990 and 2022, the racial composition of California’s public school student body shifted from one where white students were in the majority to one where Latino students are the most prominent student population. During that time period, white student enrollment declined by 48 percent while Latino student enrollment increased by 87 percent. Black and Native American student enrollment declined by about a third during that time, while the Asian population grew by a third.
From 1988 to 2022, the share of intensely segregated schools, where 90-100 percent of students enrolled were children of color decreased. In 1988, about 11.4 percent of schools enrolled more than 90 percent of students of color; by 2022, more than 44 percent of schools did.
“Most of the 10 largest California districts saw an increase in their proportion of schools that were intensely segregated between the late 1980s to 2022,” states the report. “All schools in Santa Ana Unified were intensely segregated by 2018. The proportion of San Bernadino City schools that were intensely segregated went up dramatically, from 0 percent to 92 percent.”
Adding to the issue is the fact that racial and economic segregation overlap. The poverty rate in intensely segregated schools was more than three times higher than in majority white and Asian schools. In 2022, 84.5 percent of students in intensely segregated schools qualified for subsidized meals compared to 26.0 percent in schools that with high white and Asian populations.
“Economically powerful families disproportionately obtain positive schooling and life outcomes. Given the highly unequal income and wealth distributions by race, the large majority of those economically advantaged families are Asian and white,” the report states. “Minoritized students disproportionately experience household poverty and attend school with students from poor households, which is associated with lower academic achievement, struggling peer groups, and more limited educational offerings.”
Two general student success measures show the differences in student outcomes between highly segregated schools. Graduation rates were higher in the most segregated white and Asian schools than in the most segregated Black and Latino schools (96.3 percent versus 87.5 percent). The gap was even more pronounced in the completion of A-G requirements, which qualify students for admission to University of California and California State University systems, with 68.7 percent of students meeting the requirements in white and Asian majority schools versus 43.1 percent in schools with the most underrepresented minorities.
Course enrollment, a measure of the opportunity available in high schools for students to learn, varied substantially across segregated schools. The top 10 percent of white and Asian majority schools had higher overall course enrollment per student, higher A-G course enrollment, and higher advanced course enrollment than the top 10 percent of Black and Latino dominant schools.
The report also reviews historic issues such as redlining, the composition of magnet and charter schools, and the contact between racial groups in schools.
Recommendations
“California’s school enrollment is extraordinarily diverse, but students are separated in schools. In fact, Latino and Black students are more isolated from white students than in any other state,” according to the report. “Regions many Californians think are backward, including poor Southern states, have more diverse schools for Black and Latino students than California. California’s segregated schools usually must cope with concentrated poverty, multiplying the inequalities in a rich state with deep economic disparity and millions in poverty.”
The report concludes with policy suggestions that would create new “patterns of opportunity,” including:
- State leaders could declare integrated schools and communities to be a basic goal.
- Institute transfer policies that allow students in areas of concentrated segregation and poverty to voluntarily transfer to less segregated schools, with transportation provided.
- The state and federal government could aid communities beginning to resegregate with strong fair housing enforcement and resources to recruit students and families from the populations that are leaving.
- Low-income schools in gentrifying areas threatened with enrollment decline could be given resources to recruit and welcome newcomers and provide strengthened curriculum and teaching training to facilitate the advantages of diversity.
