Extreme Segregation and Policy Inaction in California Schools

Executive Summary

California’s schools remain deeply segregated by race and class, sustaining stark educational inequities. This report presents multiple measures of segregation in California’s public schools using the most recently available data. We examined double segregation by race and class, compared segregation in magnet and charter schools, and explored racial inequalities in high school graduation rates and course enrollment patterns. Our findings reveal stark contrasts between White and Asian students and their Black and Latinx peers. Double segregation by race and class remains entrenched at high levels, reinforcing severe opportunity gaps and underscoring the urgent need for strategic intervention to drive meaningful change.

Highlights from our analysis include:

California’s school demographics shifted dramatically over the past 30 years. Relative to 1990, there were over 1 million fewer White students in 2022 and more that 1.4 million additional Latinx students. Since the late 1980s, the share of California schools that had a majority of White students plummeted from 60% to 14% while the share of schools that were majority Latinx grew from one-sixth to more than half.
California has two racially identifiable advantaged groups, White and Asian, who are less likely to be enrolled in schools of concentrated poverty than three marginalized groups: Latinx, Black, and American Indian. The typical White student was in a school with 42.9% poor students and the typical Asian student was in a similar school with 42.4% poor students. On the other hand, we observed 67% poor enrollment for the typical Black student and 70% poor enrollment for the typical Latinx student.
The typical student of a combined White and Asian group attended a school with 52.3% White and Asian students. However, the typical Black and Latinx student attended a school where only 21.6% of students were White and Asian.
California is the state with the highest proportion of intensely segregated schools in the continental U.S. The proportion of these schools with greater than 90% students of color quadrupled over the last three decades, rising from 11.4% to 44.5%. By this measure, California schools became intensely segregated at a faster rate than all other states.
Most large school districts saw an increase in intensely segregated schools, with San Bernadino City rising dramatically from 0% to 92% intensely segregated schools over the last three decades. By 2018, all schools in Santa Ana had become intensely segregated, a trend that has persisted for the last five years. Oakland was the only district to slightly reduce the proportion of intensely segregated schools, from 73% to 68%.
Racial and economic segregation overlap. The poverty rate in overwhelmingly underrepresented minority (URM) schools was more than three times higher than in overwhelmingly White and Asian schools. In 2022, 84.5% of students in high-URM schools (defined as those with greater than 90% Black, Latinx, Multiracial, and American Indian) qualified for subsidized meals compared to 26.0% in schools that were high White and Asian schools (defined as those with more than 90% White and Asian).
White, Black, and Latinx students experienced growing exposure to poverty, while the typical Asian student’s exposure remained almost unchanged from 1998 to 2022.
Black students have the highest school-based exposure to White students in smaller towns and the lowest in larger cities. Latinx students are most exposed to White students in rural schools and least in cities.
Charter schools were more segregated than similarly located magnet schools. In magnet schools, the average Black and Latinx student was in a school that was 15.2% White and Asian in 2019. In charter schools, the comparable exposure statistic was slightly lower at 12.5%. Over the last 20 years, charter schools became more intensely segregated. As of 2019, 59% of charter schools in our sample of districts were intensely segregated. Magnet schools in these same districts were much less segregated, with 36% of them intensely segregated. Charter school enrollment increased approximately 760% over 20 years, while magnet school enrollment declined.
Graduation rates were higher in the most segregated White and Asian schools than in the most segregated Black and Latinx schools (96.3% vs. 87.5%). The gap was even more pronounced in the completion of “A-G” requirements—a sequence of high school courses required for admission to California’s exclusive public universities—with 68.7% of students meeting the requirements in the most White and Asian schools versus 43.1% in schools with the most underrepresented minorities.
Course enrollment, a measure of the opportunity available in high schools for students to learn, varied substantially across segregated schools. The top 10% White and Asian schools had higher overall course enrollment per student, higher A-G course enrollment, and higher advanced course enrollment than the top 10% URM schools. However, “basic” course enrollment was higher in the schools with the most underrepresented minorities.