Racial Inequality in Education

Posted September 23, 2024
By the Annie E. Casey Foundation
A young Black boy raises his hand to answer a question in a school classroom

Race, Eth­nic­i­ty and Education

The U.S. edu­ca­tion land­scape has long been a source of unequal treat­ment, access and out­comes based on a student’s race or ethnicity.

Black stu­dents, for exam­ple, are twice as like­ly as their white peers to be in inad­e­quate­ly fund­ed school dis­tricts and 3.5 times more like­ly to be in chron­i­cal­ly under­fund­ed” dis­tricts, accord­ing to a 2024 report released by the Albert Shanker Insti­tute. The dis­crep­an­cies in fund­ing between His­pan­ic and white stu­dents are mod­er­ate­ly small­er but still large.

Some exam­ples of edu­ca­tion inequal­i­ty through­out his­to­ry include: 

Though 70 years have passed since the U.S. Supreme Court pro­hib­it­ed seg­re­ga­tion, many of America’s pub­lic schools are still racial­ly and eth­ni­cal­ly iso­lat­ed. For instance: Among pub­lic schools nation­wide, 60% of His­pan­ic stu­dents, 59% of Black stu­dents and 54% of Pacif­ic Islander stu­dents attend­ed schools where over 75% of their class­mates shared their race or ethnicity.

At the same time, white stu­dents were most like­ly to attend schools where less than 25% of their class­mates were stu­dents of col­or, accord­ing to fed­er­al data pre­sent­ed by the U.S. Sec­re­tary of Education.

The U.S. edu­ca­tion sys­tem con­tin­ues to nav­i­gate race-relat­ed issues and changes. Some of the most recent exam­ples of this include:

How Does Race Affect Edu­ca­tion Opportunities?

Not all pub­lic-school sys­tems and dis­tricts are equal, and these dif­fer­ences often fuel dif­fer­ent out­comes, oppor­tu­ni­ties and access to resources. This uneven land­scape con­tin­ues to fuel racial dis­par­i­ties that neg­a­tive­ly impact stu­dents of col­or. Some recent sta­tis­tics relat­ed to this real­i­ty include:

  • Stu­dents of col­or fall short of read­ing and math pro­fi­cien­cy bench­marks at greater rates than their white peers, accord­ing to 2022 data report­ed by the KIDS COUNT® Data Center.
    1. Among fourth graders nation­wide, 84% of Black stu­dents, 82% of Amer­i­can Indi­an stu­dents and 80% of His­pan­ic stu­dents did not read at a fourth-grade pro­fi­cien­cy lev­el. A small­er share of their Asian/​Pacific Islander (45%) and white (59%) class­mates scored below 
    2. Among eighth graders nation­wide: 91% of Black stu­dents, 89% of Amer­i­can Indi­an stu­dents and 86% of His­pan­ic stu­dents test­ed below pro­fi­cient in math. A small­er share of Asian /​Pacific Islander (44%) and white (66%) class­mates scored below pro­fi­cient in math.
  • Black stu­dents are more like­ly to be dis­ci­plined in school when com­pared to their pub­lic-school peers of oth­er racial or eth­nic groups, notes the U.S. Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Office. This real­i­ty is reflect­ed in the lat­est data report­ed by the KIDS COUNT Data Cen­ter, which cov­ers the 20172018 school year:
    1. Among all pub­lic-school stu­dents expelled from school, Black stu­dents were the race most like­ly to be expelled (49 in every 10,000 stu­dents) and Asian stu­dents were the least like­ly (4 in every 10,000 students).
    2. Among pub­lic school stu­dents issued out-of-school sus­pen­sions, Black stu­dents were most like­ly to be sus­pend­ed (12%) fol­lowed by Amer­i­can Indi­an stu­dents (7%). Asian stu­dents (1%) as well as white and His­pan­ic stu­dents (both 4%) were far less like­ly to suf­fer this same punishment.

Sus­pen­sion can dou­ble the risk of some­one drop­ping out of school, which — in turn — triples the risk of jus­tice involve­ment. Out­comes are worse in schools with a police pres­ence, which caus­es the fre­quen­cy of arrests for dis­or­der­ly con­duct to jump fivefold.

Grad­u­at­ing high school is, in many instances, a base­line require­ment for seek­ing employ­ment, advanced train­ing or a post­sec­ondary edu­ca­tion. In the 20212022 school year, the U.S. aver­age adjust­ed cohort grad­u­a­tion rate for pub­lic high school stu­dents was 87%, per the Nation­al Cen­ter for Edu­ca­tion Sta­tis­tics. With­in this group, Asian/​Pacific Islander (94%) and White (90%) stu­dents were most like­ly to grad­u­ate high school where­as His­pan­ic (83%), Black (81%) and Amer­i­can Indian/​Alaska Native (74%) stu­dents grad­u­at­ed at rates below the nation­al average.

Fac­tors in Racial Edu­ca­tion Gaps

Socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus is a mul­ti-dimen­sion­al con­struct typ­i­cal­ly mea­sured by fam­i­ly income, par­ents’ occu­pa­tions and edu­ca­tion­al levels.

A poten­tial expla­na­tion for racial achieve­ment gaps is that they are large­ly due to socioe­co­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties between white, black, and His­pan­ic fam­i­lies. As Stan­ford University’s Cen­ter for Edu­ca­tion Pol­i­cy Analy­sis notes: Black and His­pan­ic children’s par­ents typ­i­cal­ly have low­er incomes and low­er lev­els of edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment than white children’s par­ents. Because high­er-income and more-edu­cat­ed fam­i­lies typ­i­cal­ly can pro­vide more edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties for their chil­dren, fam­i­ly socioe­co­nom­ic resources are strong­ly relat­ed to edu­ca­tion­al outcomes.”

Chil­dren from low-socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus house­holds and com­mu­ni­ties devel­op aca­d­e­m­ic skills more slow­ly than chil­dren from high­er socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus groups, as report­ed by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. The school sys­tems in low-socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus com­mu­ni­ties are often under-resourced, which neg­a­tive­ly impacts the aca­d­e­m­ic progress and out­comes of the stu­dents they serve. For example:

The Cen­ter for Edu­ca­tion Pol­i­cy Analy­sis notes that racial achieve­ment gaps are strong­ly cor­re­lat­ed with — but not sole­ly due to — dif­fer­ences in racial socioe­co­nom­ic status.

COVID-19’s Effects on Racial Dis­par­i­ties in Education

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic had a pro­found impact on the deliv­ery of edu­ca­tion to stu­dents of all ages. At the start of the pan­dem­ic — from April to May 2020 — access to remote learn­ing tools, such as a com­put­er and inter­net ser­vices, were crit­i­cal. And yet, just 74% of Black house­holds had the nec­es­sary vir­tu­al learn­ing tools usu­al­ly or always avail­able” for chil­dren in their house­hold. This rate was sub­stan­tial high­er for both Asian house­holds (89%) and white house­holds (86%), accord­ing to the KIDS COUNT Data Center.

Even with the right tools at home, the nation’s abrupt shift to remote learn­ing proved chal­leng­ing. It hin­dered stu­dent and teacher engage­ment, dra­mat­i­cal­ly decreased instruc­tion­al time and hin­dered stu­dent under­stand­ing. These fac­tors fueled sig­nif­i­cant learn­ing loss for stu­dents nation­wide. They also exac­er­bat­ed exist­ing racial inequities and wors­ened exist­ing achieve­ment gaps.

Between 2019 and 2022, Black and His­pan­ic stu­dents in 20 states across the coun­try expe­ri­enced a sharp­er decline in test scores com­pared to their white peers, accord­ing to an Edu­ca­tion Recov­ery Score­card pro­duced by researchers at Har­vard, Stan­ford and Dart­mouth. While stu­dents have since regained some of these loss­es, the researchers point out that the White-Black gap was still slight­ly larg­er in 2023 than it was in 2019, par­tic­u­lar­ly in math.”

How We Can Com­bat Racial Inequal­i­ty in Education

Edu­ca­tion lead­ers and sys­tems must con­tin­ue to pri­or­i­tize the work of erad­i­cat­ing racial inequal­i­ty and racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in Amer­i­can schools.

Among the evi­dence-based strate­gies to con­sid­er: Same-race ele­men­tary school teach­ers have been shown to boost aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment among their stu­dents. In one study, Black stu­dents were ran­dom­ly assigned to at least one Black teacher in their first four years of pri­ma­ry school. This arrange­ment increased the stu­dents’ like­li­hood of grad­u­at­ing high school by 9 per­cent­age points and increased their like­li­hood of enrolling in col­lege by 6 per­cent­age points.

The Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Progress also iden­ti­fies strate­gies for real­iz­ing a more equi­table K‑12 aca­d­e­m­ic land­scape. It rec­om­mends advo­cat­ing for:

  • equi­table fund­ing via increas­ing fed­er­al fund­ing for edu­ca­tion and pro­mot­ing fair­er and more trans­par­ent fund­ing poli­cies at the state and local levels;
  • equip­ping schools with more coun­selors, nurs­es, and social work­ers rather than increas­ing sur­veil­lance and polic­ing; and
  • updat­ing school bound­aries and selec­tion cri­te­ria to pro­mote racial equity.

This post is related to:

Popular Posts

View all blog posts   |   Browse Topics

Youth with curly hair in pink shirt

blog   |   June 3, 2021

Defining LGBTQ Terms and Concepts

A mother and her child are standing outdoors, each with one arm wrapped around the other. They are looking at each other and smiling. The child has a basketball in hand.

blog   |   August 1, 2022

Child Well-Being in Single-Parent Families