New York state has the most segregated public schools in the nation, UCLA researchers said Wednesday.
And within the state, New York City schools are among the most segregated.
Nearly 30 percent of the state’s public schools had minority enrollments of 90 percent or more, even though 51 percent of the state’s students were white in the 2010-2011 school year covered by the report.
In New York City, the percentage of white students dropped from 21.3 percent in 1989-90 to 14.5 percent in 2010-11, the researchers said.
In 19 of the city’s 32 community school districts, minorities comprised at least 90 percent of the student population.
“In the 30 years I have been researching schools, New York state has consistently been one of the most segregated states in the nation — no Southern state comes close to New York,” said UCLA Civil Rights Project co-director Gary Orfield.
Illinois, Michigan, Maryland and New Jersey followed New York on the most-segregated-schools list.
NYC Department of Education spokesman Devon Puglia brushed off the findings, saying officials “value the incredible diversity among our students.”
The study also questioned why charter schools were so heavily black and Latino.
The researchers found that 100 percent of charter schools in The Bronx, 90 percent in Brooklyn and 97 percent in Manhattan had student populations comprised of at least 90 percent minorities.
The study’s authors recommended that education officials develop policies such as weighted admissions and targeted recruitment to make schools more diverse.
“To succeed in college and the job market, it’s a great advantage to work with kids across racial and class lines because that’s where opportunities in society are,” Orfield said.
Charter leaders dismissed the conclusions as bogus.
“If [charters] open in mixed-income neighborhoods as many have tried to, they are accused of abandoning their mission to serve high-needs kids and of trying to inflate their test scores,” said New York City Charter Center CEO James Merriman.
“And when they do serve children in low-income areas — neighborhoods which are historically segregated — they are accused of being too narrow in focus.”