Racial segregation is a long-standing issue in New York City’s schools, highlighted recently by advocates, academics, politicians, and most importantly by students themselves.To begin to address the issue, CCC recently published an analysis of diversity in NYC schools, and it revealed some important facts. Only 28% of schools in the city are diverse, and two-thirds of Black and Latinx students attend schools that are predominantly (more than 80 percent) Black and Latinx.

But racial and ethnic diversity is only one part of the story. While we want all our schools to be diverse, we also want schools to reflect the diversity within communities. The group commissioned to issue diversity recommendations to the Department of Education (DOE), the School Diversity Advisory Group (SDAG) said as much in their first report. “Rather than start with a standard citywide racial and economic target for all schools, the DOE should set localized targets that reflect a more achievable goal for schools. This ensures all schools and all communities have a role to play in promoting and supporting integration.”

A more localized target in the short term, while we strive for diversity in the long term, would be for schools to be representative of their communities. But what does representation look like across the city? To answer this question we turned to the SDAG, where they define a school as representative if its enrollment by race/ethnicity is within 10 percentage points of the enrollment of its school district. On the other hand, a school would not be representative if its enrollment by race/ethnicity is more than 20 percentage points off of the district enrollment figures.

For example, consider a district with 30% Latinx student enrollment. If a school in that district has between 20% to 40% Latinx enrollment – within the 10 percentage point threshold – it would be considered representative. However, if the share of Latinx students at a school is below 20 percent or more than 40 percent, the school does not represent its district.

With this definition in mind CCC sought to determine how well school student populations represent their districts, and what factors might be causing unrepresentative schools.

Here Are Some Key Findings From 2018-2019 School Year Enrollment Data:

32% could be considered within range of being representative, with enrollments by race within 10-20 percentage points of their district. 27% were representative, meaning they had enrollments within the 10 percentage point threshold recommended by the SDAG.

Representation Was Especially Lacking In Certain School Districts

Districts 2 and 3 in Manhattan, Districts 13 and 15 in Brooklyn, and District 27 in Queens, had the largest shares of unrepresentative schools.

Districts Ranked by % of Unrepresentative Schools

As a whole these districts contain only 15% of schools and 17% of students citywide but contain almost a third of all the schools that do not represent their districts.

This means the student populations of these districts are fairly diverse, but many of the individual school student populations are not.

For example, the demographics of three schools — P.S 87 an elementary school in District 3, Lab Middle School in District 2 and Frederick Douglass Academy VI a high school in District 27 — compared to their districts can be seen below.

These districts would be the place to start if integration efforts were to be targeted where real progress can be made in the short-term.

It is worth noting that Districts 3 and 15 have implemented district-wide middle-school diversity plans,and District 13 has received a grant to work on their own integration plan.