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3.31.2009

Sharp Growth in Suburban Minority Enrollment
Yields Modest Gains in School Diversity

by Richard Fry, Senior Research Associate, Pew Hispanic Center

Report Materials

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The student population of America's suburban public schools has shot up by 3.4 million in the past decade and a half, and virtually all of this increase (99%) has been due to the enrollment of new Latino, black and Asian students, according to an analysis of public school data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. Once a largely white enclave, suburban school districts in 2006-07 educated a student population that was 41.4% non-white, up from 28% in 1993-94 and not much different from the 43.7% non-white share of the nation's overall public school student population. At the same time, suburban school districts have been gaining "market share"; they educated 38% of the nation's public school students in 2006-07, up from 35% in 1993-94.

Despite the sharp rise in the racial and ethnic diversity of suburban district enrollments overall, there has been only a modest increase in the racial and ethnic diversity of student populations at the level of the individual suburban school.  For example, in 2006-07, the typical white suburban student attended a school whose student body was 75% white; in 1993-94, this same figure had been 83%. So at a time when the white share of student enrollment in suburban school districts was falling by 13 percentage points (from 72% in 1993-94 to 59% in 2006-07), the exposure of the typical white suburban student to minority students in his or her own school was growing by a little more than half that much-or 8 percentage points.

When it comes to increases in public school student enrollment, the suburbs are where most of the action has been over the past decade and a half. In 1993-94, city school districts educated a majority of the nation's minority students. That is no longer the case. The movement out of city schools has nearly exclusively been suburban school districts' gain.

The movement of minority students into suburban schools has had the overall effect of slightly reducing levels of ethnic and racial segregation throughout the nation's 93,430 public schools.  Minority students on average are less segregated in suburban school districts compared with city school districts, so the shift toward suburban school districts tends to reduce national segregation levels.

The report also examines the changes since 1993-94 in individual suburban school districts.  It lists the suburban school districts that have had the fastest growth in minority enrollment, as well as those with the highest levels of racial/ethnic segregation.

These findings are based on an analysis of the most recent available enrollment figures for the nation's public schools. The National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education collects this information and also classifies school districts as being suburban, city or town/rural districts.

Other Resources

Clotfelter, Charles T. 2004. After "Brown": The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Fry, Richard. 2007. The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of U.S. Public Schools. August. Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center.

Harris, Douglas. 2006. Lost Learning, Forgotten Promises: A National Analysis of School Racial Segregation, Student Achievement, and "Controlled Choice" Plans. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress.

Logan, John, Jacob Stowell, and Deirdre Oakley. 2002. Choosing Segregation: Racial Imbalance in American Public Schools, 1990-2000. University of Albany: Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research.

Reardon, Sean F., and John T. Yun. 2001. "Suburban Racial Change and Suburban School Segregation, 1987-95," Sociology of Education, vol. 74, April.

Racial/ethnic enrollment counts can be obtained for public school districts and individual public schools from the National Center for Education Statistics website.  Customized tables can be created and downloaded at http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/bat/.