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Pittsburgh School Enrollment by Race

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The combined African American population of Pittsburgh and Mt. Oliver—the two municipalities in the Pittsburgh school district—stands at just under 26.5 percent or roughly 81,000 people. As of 2015, African American students made up 53.5 percent of the District’s enrollment and a very high percentage (estimated at 80 percent) of charter schools in the City. The Pre-K enrollment numbers were not considered.

 

Data for the percentages of Pittsburgh’s school age population by race are not readily available but if they are close to the overall population percentages, then it is safe to say that black students make up a disproportionately large share of the overall K-12 enrollment in the Pittsburgh school district. While the cause of this over representation is an important question, we will pass over that issue in this blog entry. Instead we look at how the over representation of black students in the District manifests itself in the individual schools.

 

By grade level and type of school, the racial makeup of schools is fairly close to the overall ratio in the District. There are two anomalies. In the four traditional 9th to 12th grade high schools, blacks are underrepresented in three schools and overrepresented in one. In the seven traditional 6th to 8th grade middle schools, African Americans make up 76 percent of the enrollment with four schools over 70 percent black.

 

For the school grouped by other grade arrangements the overall racial mix reflected fairly closely the District wide numbers. In the 22 traditional K-5 elementary schools the overall enrollment includes 57 percent African Americans. Six are predominantly non-black with an average black enrollment of 30 percent or less black–the lowest being Banksville at 11.3 percent African American. Meanwhile, ten schools had predominantly black populations with several over 90 percent led by Miller at 97.5 percent.

 

In the K-8 schools, blacks made up 51 percent of all students. The lowest percentage is in Brookline at 9.7 percent while the highest is at Weil at 91.2 percent. Seven of the 14 schools had moderate to very high over representation of black students and five had moderate to high overrepresentation of non-black students.

 

These data show fairly convincingly that schools reflect to a large extent the neighborhood demographic makeup. The magnet schools are not neighborhood defined but with few exceptions are not very different than the mix seen in the other schools. CAPA stands out with only 30 percent black enrollment. Several magnets have overrepresentation of black students such a Fulton K-5 at 82 percent.

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Allegheny Institute
Allegheny Institute

The Allegheny Institute is a non-profit research and education organization. Our mission is to defend the interests of taxpayers, citizens and businesses against an increasingly burdensome and intrusive government.

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