Report: black students 4 four times more likely to attend high-poverty schools
African American children are more likely to attend high-poverty schools than their white counterparts, according to a study released by the Urban Institute.
The study also found that blacks of all socioeconomic classes live in higher-poverty neighborhoods than whites of similar income.
Living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty is a phenomenon relatively common to African Americans, but almost unknown among white populations.
Exposure to concentrated neighborhood poverty harms kids’ life chances. But it’s not just African-American kids’ neighborhoods that expose them to concentrated poverty. Black kids are also uniquely exposed to concentrated poverty in their public schools.
According to 2011-12 school year data from the U.S. Department of Education, about 33 percent of all white students attend a low-poverty school and a mere 6 percent attend a high-poverty school. In other words, white kids are about five times more likely to attend a low-poverty school than to attend a high-poverty school.
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Unfortunately, research doesn’t say the same for black kids. It is commonplace for them to attend a high-poverty school, with over 40 percent of black students (roughly 3.2 million) attending one. This means that blacks are four times more likely to attend a high-poverty school than a low-poverty school.
Over 2.1 million black students (28 percent) attend schools that are both high-poverty and 90 percent students of color.
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