A New Boom in U.S. Student Population, Census Finds

The baby boom is back, at least in American schools.

The Census Bureau reported Thursday that the number of students enrolled from kindergarten through high school has soared to 49 million, the record population figure first set a generation ago.

But things are a lot different this time around. The original boomers, who once vowed to “never trust anyone over 30,” have grown up and become parents themselves. And their offspring have been joined in classrooms by millions of children from immigrant families.

Public schools underused for years have become jammed, and veteran teachers are trying to figure out how to teach complex math and science to students from other countries and other cultures.

One in every five students in the United States now has a parent who was born in a foreign country. The growing diversity of the nation’s education system is magnified even more in California, where the schools are characterized by a mix of races and ethnicities--a change driven largely by young people of Mexican and Central American descent. Demographers point to the steady immigration of adults younger than 35--those who come with children or arrive and start families.

“What we’re seeing in California is the leading edge of something that is emerging across the nation at different levels,” said Peter Morrison, a demographer with the Rand Corp. think tank in Santa Monica. “We have had people moving into California who were parents or prospective parents, and they have set down roots. Voila, all of a sudden there’s a large population of children showing up.”

Nationally, the diversity figures are striking. Non-Latino whites account for 63% of the school population, down from 79% at the crest of the baby boom, according to the Census Bureau report. African Americans make up 16% of students, up from 14%. The Latino school population jumped to 15% from 5%, and the Asian population climbed to 5% from 1%. The report on school population, issued every two years by the Census Bureau, is based on a 1999 sample survey of households chosen to reflect the entire U.S. population. The study is separate from the results of the national census conducted last year, which will issue detailed figures later.

The report signals tough times for the nation’s schools, experts warn. “The literacy problem among older immigrant kids is an enormous challenge to the schools,” said Jorge Ruiz-de-Velasco, a research associate in education policy at the nonpartisan Urban Institute think tank in Washington. “A large number of students come from poor families or families where parents themselves often don’t have a high school equivalent education. The students are coming not only with English-language difficulty but with literacy gaps in their own languages.”

The boom in school enrollment reflects a combination of historical and demographic factors. The baby boomers themselves--the Americans born in 1946 through 1964--are members of the largest generation in American history. However, they married later than their parents and had fewer children, so it has taken a long time for them to produce the students to fill up the schools again. And immigration made a big difference: About 20% of all students have at least one foreign-born parent, and 5% of all students themselves were born in a foreign country.

The record enrollment figure of 49 million in elementary grades through high school was first set in 1970 and not matched until 1999, the Census Bureau said. In California, the surge of immigration means that no single group is in the majority in the public school system. Non-Latino whites, who were 71% of students in the 1971-72 school year, are now 36% of all students, according to state figures. Latino enrollment has jumped to 43% of the total, up from 16%. The African American share of total student population declined from 9% to 8%. And the Asian population rose to 8% from 2%.

The trend is evident at schools such as South Park Elementary near Watts.

Three decades ago, South Park was 97% African American, reflecting the South Los Angeles community it served. Now the school has flip-flopped: 78% of its 1,260 students are Latino. Just 21% are black.

As many as 25% of the students come from other countries, and two-thirds still are learning English. Some of their parents come to school to learn English in adult classes offered during the school day.

On Thursday, two dozen parents were attending one of the English classes in a classroom on South Park’s second floor, right next to classrooms filled with children. Erika Ramos came north from Mexico six months ago with her 3-year-old son, who will be a kindergartner at South Park next year. “I want my son to be successful and graduate,” Ramos, 25, said in Spanish during a break from her English lesson.

Another mother, Adriana Jardines, has been in the United States 12 years. Two of her children already have gone through South Park and another is a second-grader.

“Here they study more hours than in Mexico,” Jardines, 38, said in halting English. “Here they learn to compute. It’s good.”

The changing ethnic composition of the school has created worries about achievement. That’s because schools in California are judged by their performance on the annual Stanford 9 exam, which is given in English. South Park’s students with limited English skills take the test along with all others.

South Park enjoyed big test gains last year, but teachers now fret about keeping pace.

“It’s intense pressure,” said third-grade teacher Valerie Kokelaar, who has 20 students, half of them from other countries. “All I can worry about is how I’m going to serve the kids in my class. I can’t worry about what they will say if my test scores only go up two notches.”

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Rosenblatt reported from Washington and Helfand from Los Angeles.