Colorado ranked second in the nation in the increased number of Hispanic students attending all-minority schools, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report released Thursday.
Ten percent of Colorado Latinos attended an all-minority school in 2005-06, compared with a negligible percentage in 1993-94, the Pew report said.
As a group, black students in Colorado ranked eighth in re-segregation, going from attending virtually no all-minority schools in 1993-94 to one in 10 attending an all-minority school in 2005-06, the Pew report said.
Roughly 71 percent of Colorado public school children attend schools that are majority white, but statewide, the percentage of students going to all-white schools is now negligible, according to the nationwide Pew study of racial and ethnic components of schools. Colorado mirrored the national trend of better integrated schools for whites over the past 14 years. However, as more whites went to school with minorities, more minorities, especially Latinos and African-Americans, found themselves in growing isolation.
Pew says a massive influx of Hispanic students into America’s public schools explains the seeming contradiction in integration. In 1993-94 Latinos made up roughly one in eight public school students in the U.S., the Pew report found. By the 2005-2006 school year, they made up roughly one in five students.
The Hispanic increase drove down whites as an overall percentage of public school students nationwide. That meant a greater percentage of whites went to school with minorities. But it also meant that Latino and African-American students simultaneously became more isolated in certain areas.
