Racial Segregation and School Poverty in the United States, 1999–2016

Research over the past decade suggests that racial segregation appears to have the largest implications for students’ achievement when linked to racial differences in exposure to school poverty. This paper provides a summary and update to prior literature describing patterns and trends of racial differences in school poverty rates from the 1998–1999 through 2015–2016 school years. We describe black-white and Hispanic-white differences in school poverty rates within U.S. school districts, metropolitan areas, states, and the nation over this nearly 20-year period. We find that while exposure to poverty in schools has risen dramatically, racial differences in exposure to school poverty have been relatively stable during this time. These average trends, however, belie meaningful variability among places. Places serving large proportions of minority students have larger but declining average racial differences in exposure to school poverty. Large school districts also have larger average racial differences in exposure and have been experiencing increases in this measure over time.