My grandfather, Jose Chavira, born and raised in far West Texas and was illiterate because school was too far from his ranch.
In the 1920s David Chavira and Helena Parra attended public schools in their native El Paso. These schools were set aside for Mexicans. Helena and David, my parents, struggled to get by in 1940s Los Angeles.
My brothers and I had K-12 Los Angeles public school educations in schools that were almost exclusively Latino and Black. San Fernando High, my alma mater, was and remains an academic basket case. Its students are primarily Latino and impoverished.
Unexpectedly, I enrolled in a community college upon graduation. I was a brown boy in a sea of white. My terrible education left me unfit for the rigors of college; I nearly flunked out.
Fifty-six years later, I learned this:
The share of Latino students attending intensely segregated schools has skyrocketed over the last three decades, according to two new reports and an Axios review of federal data.
Why it matters: Intensely segregated schools, defined as schools with a student population that is more than 90% nonwhite, have fewer resources, more teacher shortages, higher student-to-school counselor ratios, and fewer AP class options.
Driving the news: As the U.S. marks the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling on Friday, American public schools are growing more separate and unequal even though the country is more racially and ethnically diverse than ever.
State of play: Around 28% of the nation’s public school students were Latino in 2021, compared to 16% in 2000. But as the share of Latinos in the country has surged, the schools they attend have become much more segregated.
- On average, the percentage of Latino students who attended intensely segregated schools jumped by 67% 1968-2021, although some regions in the country saw much more dramatic shifts, according to an Axios analysis.
- For example, the percentage of Latino students in the West who attended intensely segregated schools spiked from 12% in 1968 to 46% in 2021, according to a UCLA Civil Rights Project analysis of federal data.
- California has the highest percentage of Latino students (59%) in intensely segregated schools, followed by Texas and New York (both at 53%), the UCLA report said.
Zoom in: Segregation between Hispanic and white students, while lower on average than that of white and Black students, more than doubled in large school districts since the 1980s, a new study from Stanford and the University of Southern California found.
- On average, Latino students attended a school that was 75% nonwhite, while the typical Black student attended a school that was 76% nonwhite.
- The average Latino student also attended a school that had 60.7% poor students.
- The average Asian American and white students attended schools with 37% and 35% students in poverty respectively.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 