Hispanics attend largest,
poorest high schools
Ben Feller
WASHINGTON — Hispanic children are much more likely than white
or black students to attend the nation’s largest and poorest
public high schools, a new analysis shows.
More than half of Hispanic teens, 56 percent, attend schools with
enrollments of roughly 1,800 students — schools that rank
in the 90th percentile in terms of size. Only 32 percent of black
children and 26 percent of white children attend schools that large,
according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonprofit research group
that studies the Latino population.
At the same time, Hispanics are more likely to be in high schools
that have the highest concentrations of poverty and largest ratios
of students for every teacher. Hispanics can be of any race, but
in this report, the groupings of whites and blacks included no Hispanics.
The study also found that almost four in 10 Hispanics go to high
schools with a student-teacher ratio of greater than 22 to 1, while
less than two in 10 white students or black students go to such
schools.
“Hispanic teens are more likely than any other racial or ethnic
group to attend public high schools that have the dual characteristics
of extreme size and poverty,” said Richard Fry, senior associate
at the center and the author of the new research.
The Pew Hispanic Center’s data are from an Education Department
survey that collects data on every public high school in the country.
The figures come from the 2002-03 school year.
School size matters, Fry said, because research shows students in
large schools have higher dropout rates and more trouble making
academic gains.
As the president, Congress and governors give more attention to
high school, Fry said, Hispanics may have the most to gain by efforts
to reshape schools into smaller environments.
The number of Hispanics surpassed the number of black people in
the U.S. in the 2000 Census, making them the largest minority group
in the country.
Much of the research on the achievement gap between Hispanics and
whites has focused on family income, parents’ level of education
and the ability of students to speak English.
But Fry said educators and policy-makers have significantly more
control over changing the characteristics of the school buildings
than they do the traits of the students themselves.
Most Hispanic students are concentrated in seven states that tend
to have larger high schools: California, Texas, Florida, New York,
Arizona, Illinois and New Jersey.
The number of young Hispanic students attending college is rising,
according to another report released by the Pew Hispanic Center
on Tuesday.
But that study, based on enrollment data from colleges, found that
the number of whites enrolling in four-year college is growing even
faster. “When it comes to college enrollment,” Fry said,
“Hispanics are chasing a target that is accelerating ahead
of them.”
(Associated Press)
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