For the first time ever, kids of color make up the majority of students enrolled in Washington public schools.
It’s a slim majority, at 50.6%, but the growth in recent years has been rapid. Between 2009 and 2022, the percentage of kids identifying as a race other than white increased by nearly 50%.
The milestone was always inevitable; it’s just a question of timing. National estimates say that net U.S. population growth in the past several years has been from people of color, and public schools are generally more racially diverse than the adult population. Washington state’s total population is around 66% white.
Read more from the Seattle Times.
