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This report by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) finds that the South’s public schools have a majority of students of color for the first time in history. In the school year ending 2009, African American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, American Indian, and multi-racial children constituted slightly more than half of all students attending public schools in the 15 states of the South.
This transformation establishes an important landmark in American diversity and a historic milestone for the only section of the United States where racial slavery, White supremacy, and racial segregation of schools were enforced though law and social custom for more than two-thirds of the nation’s history.
In 2007, SEF released its report,
A New Majority: Low Income Students in the South's Public Schools , showing that low income students—children eligible for free or reduced lunch—also have become a majority in the South’s public schools. SEF’s new report finds that the percentage of low income students in the South’s public schools has continued to increase since 2007.
As a result of these two changes in school enrollment, the South is now the first and only region in the nation’s history to have both a majority of low income students and a majority of students of color enrolled in public schools.
The SEF report analyzes this important landmark by examining the over-arching historical, social political and demographic events of the last 140 years that established today’s trend and its implications for Southern education and the Southern economy.
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This report by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) finds that the South’s public schools have a majority of students of color for the first time in history. In the school year ending 2009, African American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, American Indian, and multi-racial children constituted slightly more than half of all students attending public schools in the 15 states of the South.
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