Extent of Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Segregation

“Segregation, both economic and racial/ethnic, poses one of the most formidable barriers to educational equity…more. Under conditions of economic segregation, low-income students disproportionately attend schools with high concentrations of other low-income students. Schools that are marked by concentrated poverty often lack the human, material, and curricular resources to meet the academic and socioemotional needs of their populations. Segregation also brings racial differences in exposure to concentrated poverty, leading to nonwhite students being in schools with higher rates of concentrated poverty than other students. This situation exacerbates racial disparities in educational outcomes”.¹…less

Segregation has been associated with limiting the opportunities that children need to develop important life skills, such as interacting effectively with diverse groups,² as well as with limiting the resources available to students from racial/ethnic minority groups and low-income families.^{3, 4} This domain, Extent of Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Segregation, is examined in relation to one indicator— public elementary and secondary school students’ exposure to racial, ethnic, and economic segregation—using data from the Common Core of Data (CCD) and the Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE) program. These indicators are based on recommendations in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) framework. The NASEM report notes that some of the recommended indicators have limitations. Currently, the Equity in Education Dashboard provides data based on published products. Because data in our published products do not always perfectly align with the recommended indicators in the NASEM report, we have indicated where our data differ from recommendations in the report. More findings will be added to the Equity in Education Dashboard over time. Whereas the NASEM report uses the term “segregation” in this domain, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports measures of the “concentration of low-income students and “racial concentration”; thus, the findings throughout this domain follow the terminology used in NCES reporting. Group differences in this domain are examined across two educational equity dimensions: race/ethnicity and school locale, wherever the data allow.⁵

Key Findings on the Extent of Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Segregation

• For public elementary and secondary school students, there were differences in the concentration of low-income students in the schools they attended by both race/ethnicity and school locale⁶ in 2021.
• Compared with the national averages, higher percentages of Hispanic, Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Pacific Islander⁷ students attended high-poverty and mid-high⁸ poverty schools.
• A higher percentage of students who attended city schools attended high-poverty schools (36 percent), compared with students who attended town schools (18 percent), suburban schools (15 percent), and rural schools (13 percent). 
• There are different levels of racial concentration within schools by student race/ethnicity.
• In 2021, more than half of Hispanic, Black, and Pacific Islander students attended public schools in which the combined enrollment of students of color was at least 75 percent of total enrollment.
• Forty-two percent of American Indian/Alaska Native students, 41 percent of Asian students, and 22 percent of students of Two or more races attended schools in which the combined enrollment of students of color was at least 75 percent of total enrollment. In contrast, 6 percent of White students attended such schools.

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