The Pew Hispanic Center has released two new reports and they are  
outlined for you below. Both look at the continuing growth of the  
Hispanic population in American schools.

If you are interested in reading the reports in their entirety, visit  
the Web sites given after the briefs.



THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION

Since the mid-1990s, two trends have transformed the landscape of  
American public education: enrollment has increased because of the  
growth of the Hispanic population, and the number of schools has also  
increased. This report examines the intersection of those trends.  
Total public school enrollment in the United States peaked at 46.1  
million in 1971 as the youngest members of the baby boom generation  
arrived in the nation's classrooms. Enrollment gradually dropped off,  
to 39.2 million in fall 1984, then began to increase once again,  
reaching 48.2 million -- a 23% jump -- in fall 2002. Examining data  
for the decade of most concentrated change -- between the 1993-94 and  
2002-03 school years -- this report finds that Hispanics accounted  
for 64% of the students added to public school enrollment. Meanwhile,  
writes Rick Fry, blacks accounted for 23% of the increase and Asians  
11%. White enrollment declined by 1%. During that same period, 15,368  
schools, with an enrollment of 6.1 million in 2002-03, were opened.  
Nearly half, 2.5 million, of the students attending the new schools  
were white and meanwhile white enrollment in older schools dropped by  
2.6 million. In contrast, about two-thirds of the increase in Latino  
enrollment was accommodated in older schools. Assessing the changes  
in the racial and ethnic composition of school enrollment, this  
report finds that despite population change, white students continued  
to attend schools populated primarily by other whites and relatively  
few attended schools populated primarily by minorities. The report  
also finds that a relatively small number of schools absorbed most of  
the increase in Hispanic enrollment and that those schools differ in  
important ways from schools less affected by Hispanic population  
growth. The schools that experienced the largest growth in Hispanic  
enrollment were generally larger, had more students on federal  
subsidies and also had greater teacher-student ratios--the latter an  
important indicator that has improved across the nation but not as  
significantly in Hispanic-impacted schools.

http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=72


A Statistical Portrait of Hispanics at Mid-Decade

This statistical profile of the Latino population is based on Pew  
Hispanic Center tabulations of the Census Bureau's 2005 American  
Community Survey public use microdata file, which was released August  
29, 2006. The topics covered are virtually the same as those in the  
long form of the decennial census. Fully implemented nationwide for  
the first time in 2005, the ACS became the largest household survey  
in the United States, with a sample of about 3 million addresses. It  
provides statistical resources not previously available except with  
data from a decennial census.

http://pewhispanic.org/reports/middecade/



Gail J. Price
Multimedia Specialist
National Center for Family Literacy
325 West Main Street, Suite 300
Louisville, KY 40205

Phone: 502 584-1133, ext. 112
Fax: 502 584-0172


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