Latino students in Denver Public Schools are segregated by race, class and language, according to new study

Fifty years after the US Supreme Court ordered Denver Public Schools to integrate, a new report finds that segregation is again pervasive in the city's schools.

The report commissioned by the Latino Education Coalition founds that many schools in DPS are triple segregated by race, class and language.

Also finding more than half of all Latino students in the district attend schools segregated by poverty.

And that students in schools segregated by race and poverty also had lower achievement.

Craig Peña, a member of the Latino Education Coalition, said, "Denver Public Schools is incredibly segregated. In fact I would venture to say that it's more segregated now than in '73 when it came under court order."

Peña and his sister Theresa were among the plaintiffs in the original Keyes case.

In 1973 Denver became the first urban district outside the south ordered to desegregate.

"This is just so disheartening seeing where we're at," Peña said.

The new study was conducted by Peña and by Kim Carrazco Strong, Ph.D. of The BUENO Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The study found that DPS schools are segregated by ethnicity, language, social class and that there are four times as many gifted students at predominantly white schools while there are fifty percent more special education students in schools where students of color are segregated.

Peña said, "You have wealthy schools with no low income students and you have low income schools with no wealthy students, and you'll see incredible disparities in attainment." 

Luna Baez-Vizguerra recently graduated from Kunsmiller Creative Arts in southwest Denver.

She says the findings are consistent with what she saw at her school where 80% of students are Latino.

Baez-Vizguerra said, "It was a very low chance that I would see a Latino student in an AP class, a concurrent enrollment class and I feel like that was probably due to the fact that their teachers don't feel the need to challenge them enough because they underestimate their abilities."

Luna's mother says she doesn't want her children to face any barriers to success.

Jeannette Vizguerra said, "We are all human here and we all deserve the same education, the same resources."

The Latino Education Coalition wants to work with Denver Public Schools to research why schools have become more segregated since court ordered busing ended in 1995.

The Coalition then wants to engage the community to identify and implement solutions.  While calling out the degree to which Latino students are segregated, Peña said "I'd like to think Denver's better than that."

The research found that Black and Latino students are not impacted by school segregation on the same scale, "Instead Latino students are almost twice as likely as Black students to attend schools segregated by students of color and low SES (socio-economic scale) students."

Read the full report, Resegregation in Denver Public Schools

DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero issued a statement about the research saying:

"While the results of this study are unfortunate, I am committed to doing everything we can to remove the scourge of segregation from our schools. I look forward to collaborating with the LEC on our forthcoming study into the causative factors that led to re-segregation. It is vitally important that we leave no stone unturned in finding the root causes, even if the findings make us uncomfortable. While many factors led to this outcome we are not without blame. It is time for DPS to take a look in the mirror and see if any of our own actions may have contributed to the re-segregation of our schools. As Superintendent it is my duty to advocate for all our students by breaking down the systems of oppression when we find them."