A new report from the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles finds that although the city of Washington, D.C., has become more diverse in recent years, racial segregation in education remains rampant in the District’s schools.
Between 1980 and 2010, the Black population of Washington declined by 31 percent, while the White population increased by 35 percent. From 1992 to 2013, the percentage of students in the public schools in Washington who were Black declined from 89 percent to 73 percent. The percentage of White students increased from 4 percent to 9 percent. But, on average, White students attend a school where nearly half of their classmates are White. In contrast, 71 percent of all Black students attend schools where 99 or 100 percent of their classmates are Black. More than 88 percent of Black students in the District attend schools where at least 90 percent of all students are Black.
In 2002, Blacks made up 55 percent of the students in Washington’s private schools By 2012, Blacks were just 23.6 percent of private schools students. Whites went from 32 percent of all private school students in 2002 to 58.4 percent in 2012.
The full report, Our Segregated Capital: An Increasingly Diverse City With Racially Polarized Schools, may be downloaded by clicking here.
