Diversity Data
Laura Ospina Baca
Walden University

Dr. Fannie M. Haughton
Enhancing Learning through Linguistic and Cultural Diversity, EDUC 6650
September 8, 2014

Diversity Data The student diversity seen in today’s public schools has changed tremendously in the last few years and will only continue to change (Laureate Education, Inc, n.d.). Unfortunately, because most teachers do not know about their students’ cultural backgrounds, alternative pedagogies and research based strategies have not been implemented to meet the needs of all of the students in the classroom. “In order to understand the sociopolitical context of multicultural education, we need to know something about the changes in the United States in the recent past, and how these changes have transformed our schools” (Nieto & Bode, 2008). Before researching about the United States, the states of Georgia, and Forsyth County I made some predictions about the demographic statistics. I started out by making predictions about the nation as a whole. The first prediction I made is about racial and ethnic groups. I made the prediction that the population in the United States consists of 40% white, 20% African Americans, 18% Hispanics, 12% Asian, 5% Pacific Islander, and 5% Native Americans. My second prediction is that approximately 40% of children come from homes where English is not the primary language spoken. Also, I predicted that 25% of people living in the United States are living below the poverty level. Another prediction was that out of all the racial and ethnic groups Asians and White are the two groups with the highest academic achievement. African Americans and Hispanics would be the two groups with the lower academic achievement. After that, I made predictions about the state of Georgia. I predicted that 55% of the population consists of White, 20% African American, 10% Hispanic, 8% Asian, 5% Native American, and 2% Pacific Islander. Before researching, I thought that 24% of children came from homes where English is not the first language spoken. I also thought that 30% of the people living in Georgia were living in poverty because of the population in the Blue Ridge Mountains and all the rural areas. Finally, I made predictions about Forsyth County. I thought that 67% of the population consisted of white, 15% Hispanics, 12% African Americans, 3% Asian, 2% Native American, and 1% Pacific Islander. I also made the prediction that about 15% of the people living in Forsyth County are living below the poverty level and about 20% come from homes where English is not the primary language. First I researched the nation as a whole using The United States Census Bureau and discovered that there are approximately 318,839,645 people living in the United States. I kept searching for specific information about ethnicity and race and found statistics based on a 2010 Census. The following information only highlights people who indicated to be Hispanic, Not Hispanic or Latino, or White alone. There are 50.5 million people of Hispanic descent, or 16.3% of the whole country’s population (Jones, Humes, & Ramirez, 2011). “More than half of the growth in the total population of the United States between 2000 and 2010 was due to the increase in the Hispanic population” (Jones, Humes, & Ramirez, 2011, p. 3). It came to a surprise to see how quickly the population of people of Hispanic descent is truly growing. It was also interesting to see that the number of people who reported to be White Non-Hispanic of the 2010 Census decreased from 69.1% in the year 2000 to 63.7% in 2010. According to information conducted on a 2012 Census, approximately 15%, or 46.5 million people are living in poverty in the United States (United States Census Bureau, 2013). When looking at the Census data broken down by race, I found out that 72.4% of the population is White, 12.6% is African American, 0.9% is American Indian or Alaskan Indian, 4.8% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Island or