Troubling Trends for School Segregation in New Jersey

News Release:  November 15, 2017                                 

Contact:  John McDonald; jmcdonald@gseis.ucla.edu

Troubling Trends for School Segregation in New Jersey

 New UCLA Civil Rights Project Research finds Little Progress for Blacks

Segregation Grows More Severe for Latino Students

Los Angeles--Amid demographic changes reshaping New Jersey’s student population, new research from the UCLA Civil Rights Project makes clear that the state has made little, if any, progress toward reducing the segregation of Black and Hispanic students in the state’s schools. More than one quarter of New Jersey Black students attend schools where less than 1 percent of students are white, and the number of Hispanic students attending these “apartheid schools” has doubled since 1989, and continues to increase. The large majority of Black and Latino students attend schools doubly segregated by both race and income.

“While New Jersey has taken historic steps to equalize funding for high poverty schools, segregation has gone largely unchecked,” says Professor Gary Orfield, co-director of The Civil Rights Project. “New Jersey will have a future with no racial majority, greatly challenged by severe racial stratification and division.”

The report, New Jersey’s Segregated Schools: Trends and Paths Forward, updates earlier research published by the Civil Rights Project in 2013. That report detailed troubling racial and economic segregation trends and patterns from 1989 – 2010. The latest report includes new data from 2010-2015. The research updates public school enrollment trends and details segregation in the state’s schools by race and income. It also includes information about segregation in private schools, examines student enrollment trends in charter schools and their potential to increase segregation, and includes new research on segregation in pre-k schools. A new analysis looks at the plight of students who are English Language Learners, finding many attend schools triply segregated by race, income and language.

“The findings of this research are deeply disturbing and little has been done since our initial report,” says Orfield. “On most of our measures of black segregation there is little progress, and the situation is notably more severe for Latino students. Continuing segregation poses harm to a large and growing sector of the state’s population and forgoes the benefits desegregation could bring to the Garden State for all students.”

Key findings of the report include:

The student population is transforming.

• White student enrollment has declined significantly, while the Black student population has remained stable and Hispanic enrollment has increased rapidly. With Asians now making up 10 percent of overall student enrollment, a four- race student population has emerged. There is no longer a racial subgroup that makes up a majority of the public school enrollment.

• The share of students in New Jersey schools living in poverty has increased by 10 percent since 1989-1990.

• More than 10 percent of students in New Jersey attend private schools. While private school enrollment has declined, nearly 70 percent of private school enrollment is white and is increasing. Asian enrollment in private schools is also increasing, while the number of black and Hispanic students is decreasing. About 10 percent of black and Hispanic students attend private schools, a declining share of the total.

• The number of charter school students is on the rise, with more than 41,000 enrolled in 2015-16. Black and Hispanic students make up 86 percent of students in charter schools. If enrollment in charter schools continues to rise, charter schools may exacerbate the segregation crisis in New Jersey.

• Between 1989 and 2015, the proportion of schools serving a majority nonwhite student population more than doubled from 22% to 46%.

• The percentage of students in intensely segregated schools, those serving a population with 0% to 10% white students—nearly doubled from 11.4% to 20.1%.

• The proportion of students attending apartheid schools—schools serving a population with 0% to 1% white students—also nearly doubled from 4.8% to 8.3%

• While the percentage of black students in intensely segregated schools and apartheid schools has gradually declined over the last twenty-five years, nearly half of black students still attend 90-100% intensely segregated schools, and over one-quarter of black students attend schools where less than 1% of students are white. The percentage of black students in apartheid schools has increased since 2010.

• Among Hispanic students, a little over 40 percent attend intensely segregated schools, a number that has remained stable over time. But the percentage of Hispanic students attending apartheid schools is increasing, from 7 percent in 1989-90 to more than 14 percent in 2015-16.

• A large share of severe segregation is concentrated in a few intensely segregated school districts.

• The exposure of black and Hispanic students to white students is decreasing. The percentage of white students in a school the typical black student attends has decreased from 26% to 22% over the last twenty-five years. Similarly, the share of white students in a school where the typical Hispanic student attends has declined from 29% to 25% during the same period.

• In 2015, segregated schools—both intensely segregated schools with 0 to 10 percent whites and apartheid schools with 0 to 1 percent whites—enrolled a remarkably high percentage of students living in poverty.

• Students living in poverty accounted for 77% of enrollment in intensely segregated schools and nearly 80% of the total enrollment in apartheid schools.

• The typical black student and Hispanic student attend schools where nearly 60% of students are living in poverty.

• The level of segregation black and Hispanic children encounter at the pre-K level was more severe than the segregation experienced across all school levels. The typical black student went to a pre-K program where more than 80% of children were black or Hispanic

• In intensely segregated schools with 0 to 10 percent whites, one in seven students was an English learner in 2015. This was the same for apartheid schools.

• Like poor students, black students, and Hispanic students, English Language Learners (ELL) tend to be isolated in racially segregated schools where the ELL share has been on the rise over time.

• In general, ELLs go to schools where a majority of their peers are from low-income families. In the typical school attended by an ELL student, nearly two-thirds of students are economically disadvantaged students.

• A significant portion of ELLs in New Jersey are linguistically isolated. The typical ELL student is in a school where a fifth of the student population is made up of English learners. In elementary schools, ELLs tend to go to schools where ELLs account for a quarter of total enrollment

“The basic lesson of the report is that the future of the state and its communities depends on turning around present trends and bringing together New Jersey’s people,” concludes Orfield. “The state has resources and talent to address the challenge, which will only grow more difficult with time. Turning onto a viable future path will take understanding and leadership, and could produce very large rewards. The time to act is now.”

The report (PDF) can be found here.

About the Civil Rights Project

The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles is co-directed by Gary Orfield and Patricia Gándara, research professors at UCLA. Founded in 1996 at Harvard University by Orfield and Christopher Edley, Jr., its mission is to create a new generation of research in social science and law on the critical issues of civil rights and equal opportunity for racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. CRP has commissioned more than 400 studies, published more than 15 books and issued numerous reports monitoring the success of American schools in equalizing opportunity and providing the authoritative source of segregation statistics. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision upholding affirmative action, and in Justice Breyer’s dissent (joined by three other Justices) to its 2007 Parents Involved decision, cited the Civil Rights Project’s research.