Report: Bleak Picture for Latino, Other Minority Kids in Public Schools

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young boy using the laptopLatino and other minority students have worse educational opportunities than white students, according to new federal data, USA Today reports.

Differences include fewer advanced math and science course offerings, harsher discipline, and less-qualified teachers for minority students of various racial/ethnic groups, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection survey, which focuses on all 97,000 U.S. public schools.

Among the findings reported by USA Today:

  • Among high schools serving the highest percentage of African-American and Latino students, one in three don’t offer a single chemistry course, and one in four don’t offer a math course more advanced than Algebra I.
  • In schools that offer “gifted and talented” programs, African-American and Latino students represent 40 percent of students but only 26 percent of those in such programs.
  • African-American, Latino, American Indian and Alaska Native students attend schools with higher concentrations of first-year teachers than white students.
  • Students with disabilities are more than twice as likely to be suspended than those without disabilities.
  • African-American students are suspended and expelled at a rate more than three times as high as white students (16 percent vs. 5 percent).

“This data collection shines a clear, unbiased light on places that are delivering on the promise of an equal education for every child and places where the largest gaps remain,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a press statement. “In all, it is clear that the United States has a great distance to go to meet our goal of providing opportunities for every student to succeed.”

Learn more about the data report here.

By The Numbers By The Numbers

20.7

percent

of Latino kids have obesity (compared to 11.7% of white kids)

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