For this report, the first of a series, the National School Desegregation Research Project obtained federal data for the 1984-85 school year, which show a substantial change in the racial composition of American's public schools since 1968, when data were first collected. The white majority is shrinking, due to a large decline in fertility and a small shift to private schools. Concurrently, the Hispanic, Asian and American Indian enrollments are growing very rapidly, due to higher fertility levels and large-scale immigration. The proportion of Black students is growing most substantially in the old industrial belt of the north, not in the south. The west now has almost as high a proportion of minority enrollment as has the south. The United States is becoming a much more multiracial society in which problems of equal education and race relations within schools and other central institutions will be even more critical than they have been in the past. The statistics foretell a changing society, with large majorities of "minorities" in public schools. Groups that have traditionally been less successful in public education and have been the targets of discrimination will be larger and larger fractions of the school population. (PS)