WASHINGTON

The number of Hispanic students in the nation's public schools nearly doubled from 1990 to 2006, accounting for 60 percent of the total enrollment growth, a report by the Pew Hispanic Center notes.

The report, "One-in-Five and Growing Fast:  A Profile of Hispanic Public School Students," a statistical portrait of the students’ demographic, language, and family background, also finds that  10 million Hispanic students now attend U.S, public schools, accounting for 20 percent all public school students.

Growth in Hispanic enrollment is expected to continue for decades, according to a recently released U.S. Census Bureau population projection. In 2050, school-age Hispanic children are projected to outnumber school-age non-Hispanic White children.

Overall, Hispanics are the largest minority group in the public schools in 22 states, the center said. .In 2006, it noted, Hispanics were about half of all public school students in California, up from 36 percent in 1990. They were more than 40 percent of enrollments in three additional states (Arizona, New Mexico and Texas) and between 20 per cent and 40 per cento all public school students in five states (Nevada, Colorado, Illinois, Florida and New York).

The Pew Hispanic Center is a non-partisan research organization based in Washington, D.C. and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

According Pew, the report’s key findings were as follows:

• The vast majority of Hispanic public school students (84 percent) were born in the United States.
• Seven-in-ten (70 percent of) Hispanic students speak a language other than English at home.
• Nearly one-in-five (18 percent) of all Hispanic students speak English with difficulty.
• Nearly three-in-five Hispanic students (57 percent) live in households with both of their parents, compared with 69 percent of non-Hispanic White students and 30 percent of non-Hispanic Black students.
• More than seven-in-ten U.S. born Hispanic students of immigrant parents (71 per cent) live with both parents.  Smaller shares of foreign-born students (58 percent) and U.S.-born students of native parentage (48 percent) reside with both parents.
• More than a quarter of Hispanic students (28 percent) live in poverty, compared with 16 percent of non-Hispanic students. In comparison, more than a third of non-Hispanic Black students (35 percent) reside in poverty and about one-in-ten non-Hispanic White students live in a poor household.
• Foreign-born Hispanic students (35 percent) are more likely than their native-born counterparts (27 percent) to live in poverty.

The report is available on the Internet at www.pewhispanic.org