"Some researchers had suggested that the multiracial question might affect the count of blacks, since such a high percentage have mixed racial heritage," said Nampeo R. McKenney, director of the program for special population statistics at the Census Bureau.

While some data sets treat Hispanic origin as a distinct category, allowing for dinstinct counts of Hispanic blacks, Hispanic whites, etc., in the DOE data, Hispanic is treated as a race, so each student is either Hispanic, Black, White or another race.

They include counts of all Latino and Asian groups, as well as of non-Hispanic blacks, whites and others, along with data on the makeup of their households, family sizes and ages in every census tract in the city.