White/Latino School Resegregation, the Deprioritization of School Integration, and Prospects for a Future of Shared, High-Quality Education

       Latino School Segregation as a Twenty-First-Century Problem

      Why, from an equal educational opportunity perspective, should there be any significant concern about the school segregation of Latino youth? What does racial balance have to do with effective, equity-based schooling practice? To understand how Latino school segregation constitutes such a potent challenge to equal educational opportunity in the United States, it is imperative to view the situation beyond a simple “racial balance” issue. In reality, Latino school segregation is systematically linked to other forms of isolation including segregation by socioeconomic status, residential location, and increasingly by language. What has been much less politicized in the integration debate is the class component of segregated schools, that is, the socioeconomic injustice that segregated schools tend to perpetuate, based on the concentrated poverty that is so strongly associated with race in the United States. Unfortunately, Latino segregation almost always involves double or triple segregation, including conditions of concentrated poverty and linguistic separation.

      Research statistics from the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechas Civiles at UCLA provide dimension to the problem. Nationally, Latinos are three times more likely than Whites to be in high-poverty schools and twelve times as likely to be in schools where almost everyone is poor (Orfield and Lee 2006). In the western United States, Latinos make up 55 percent of students attending high-poverty schools (defined as schools with 50–100 percent poor students) and 76 percent of those in extreme-poverty schools (defined as 90–100 percent poor students). This is in stark contrast to White students, who represent 26 percent of those in high-poverty schools and only 7 percent of those in extreme-poverty schools. Put another way, 82 percent of White students and only 7 percent of Latinos attend low-poverty schools (20).

      In these terms, the problem of Latino school segregation is not a simple psychological burden of racial isolation but a larger syndrome of inequalities related to the double and triple segregation Latino students face in racially isolated schools.¹ Latino youth segregated in high-poverty schools—what Orfield and Lee have called “institutions of concentrated disadvantage”—face a host of challenges that impede their access to high-quality K-12 education as well as to college. Students in such schools often face linguistic isolation, with large numbers of native Spanish speakers and few fluent speakers of academic English, which severely limits their opportunities to practice and acquire English, an element considered essential for success in high school, higher education, and beyond (Gándara and Hopkins 2009; Gifford and Valdes 2006). Other significant disadvantages include less contact with teachers credentialed in the subjects they are teaching, a more limited curriculum often taught at less challenging levels, less availability of advanced placement courses that prepare (and sometimes qualify) students for college admission, generally lower levels of parental education, less access to pro-academic peer groups, violence in the form of crime and gangs, dropout problems, lower college-going rates, and lack of proper nutrition and other untreated health problems (Balfanz and Legters 2004; Clotfelter, Ladd, and Vigdor 2005).

      In other words, Latino students in racially segregated, high-poverty schools face isolation not only from the White community, but from middle-class schools and the potential benefits derived from them. Low-poverty schools tend to offer stronger academic competition, the ability to attract and hold more qualified instructors teaching in their subject areas, the availability of more accelerated and academically demanding courses, more active involvement of parents, stronger relationships with colleges, better campus facilities and equipment, greater access to pro-academic peer groups, greater access to social networks and experiences that can lead to increased educational and job opportunities, and higher graduation and college-going rates (Betts, Rueben, and Danenberg 2000; Haycock 1998; Orfield 2001).

      Beyond the obstacles that confront working-class Latino youth and their families in segregated schooling contexts are the extreme challenges faced by the urban and suburban school systems that serve them. Besides often severe inequalities in school finance due to differential property tax bases, such schools are burdened by added instructional costs related to language training and some forms of special education, constant retraining and supervision of new teachers due to high turnover, frequent student movement and midyear transfers that lead to instability in school enrollments (which also affects consistency of state and federal funding), higher needs for remedial education, increased need for counseling/social work support for students experiencing crises related to living in conditions of poverty, and health emergencies that may arise given many working families’ limited access to preventive care (Orfield and Lee 2005). Taking into account these additional costs, it is clear that even liberal educational reforms aimed at equalizing school funding are likely to fall short, as equal dollars simply cannot produce equal opportunities. From an equity-based schooling perspective, the challenge posed by school segregation is not one of simple racial imbalance, but of the clear disadvantages and burdens faced by students isolated in high-poverty schools versus students who enjoy the relative advantages of low-poverty schools.

      A critical question is why, given the tangible and damaging consequences of school segregation to Latino youth, so little attention is given to the current crisis. This is particularly perplexing in the United States, where public opinion has become steadily more supportive of desegregated schools. Since the early 1980s, a vast majority of Americans have tended to endorse desegregation in principle, claiming a philosophical preference for racially integrated schools.² This popular preference is guided by the wisdom that children must learn how to understand and work with others across differences in order to develop the skills for success in cross-cultural and multiracial work and living environments. In fact, recent longitudinal studies on the experiences of youth who have attended integrated primary and secondary schools point to significant long-term social and career benefits to all students, including improved chances of a desegregated future life, higher educational and occupational aspirations, and an increased likelihood of living and working in interracial settings (Wells 1995; Wells et al. 2009; Yun and Kurlaender 2004; Eaton 2001).

      Furthermore, a long-held justification among parents for resistance to integrated schooling—that shared educational environments of this kind cannot be made conducive to high-quality learning for all students—has been challenged by an increasingly rich body of scholarly research identifying a broad range of evidence-based practices that promote effective, shared learning