Our sister publication, the Seattle Chinese Post, recently published an article about how minorities will be the majority in public schools in the United States. The staff here at NWAW was skeptical.
Questions we asked:
Is that true?
Minorities will be the majority in public schools — not just in Seattle, but in totality in the United States?
Really?
Who or what was the source?
After doing some research, believe it or not, IT IS TRUE. According to the U.S. Department of Education, this fall, we will most likely be the majority.
Numbers and data can be extremely boring—so that this is why we have… Infographics!
Makes it fairly clear, right?
2014 will be the crux, when the percentage of minorities will tip the balance, not by a huge percentage. Perhaps we can call it closer to… equality.
Our big sister publication was not making things up. That minority blue-green-yellow-black bar is beating the smaller, cleared-out bar. It’s not a competition, but the statistics are surprising. Of course, in some states, there is clearly a Caucasian majority in public schools, but when summing up our country in total, the percentage has shifted. It has been steadily doing so since 1997.
What are the conclusions we can draw from a graph or chart, and the bullet points? What are the reasons behind it?
What are the implications? It’s a rhetorician’s dream assignment. There are several factors.
—Private vs. public schooling (this brings up interesting issues of privilege and class).
The argument seems to be, the majority is moving to private schooling.
—Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans — we are turning into the majority. According to Pew Research, most of the growth is driven by U.S.-born Hispanic and Asian children rather than immigrant children. So whether attending public or private schools, all signs point to we are going to gain a larger and louder voice, or hopefully, an equal one.
Read our student contributors’ articles this week… (smiley face infographic icon with wink infographic). You can decide how majority our minority student writers are. (end)
Access the full research report from the U.S. Department of Education at: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014051.pdf.