New Research: Demographics of School District Secession

This guest post is written by Alexandra Cooperstock, a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the intersection of neighborhoods, schools, and policy for shaping inequality and educational opportunity. Originally published in the Social Forces journal, this post is a summary of research about school district secession in…

Data Access and the Study of Educational Equity: Implications from a National School Boundary Data Collection Effort

This post is written by Sarah Asson, Annie Maselli, and Ruth Krebs Buck, graduate students at Penn State University and research assistants on the Longitudinal School Attendance Boundary Survey (LSABS). LSABS is led by Dr. Erica Frankenberg, Penn State Professor of Education and Demography at Penn State, and Dr. Christopher Fowler, Associate Professor of Geography…

Parents’ Conceptions of School Enrollment as Property

This post was originally published in Poverty & Race a journal from the Poverty & Race Research Action Council. In addition to the article posted below, the most recent edition includes articles about expanding access to affordable housing and an excerpt from this new book on school segregation in NYC. All are highly recommended. The…

New Research: School Rezoning Processes & Outcomes

This post is written by Andrene J. Castro & Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, each professors in the School of Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Along with Kimberly Bridges, Shenita E. Williams, and Mitchell Perry, they’ve been engaged in a larger project researching school rezoning across Virginia between 2019 and 2021. The summary below offers key findings from…

As new federal funds for school integration efforts become a possibility, we should explore how current integration policies address race and choice in their design

This post is written by Madeline Good, a former teacher and current doctoral student studying educational policy at the University of Missouri. Her primary research focuses on how policies interact with the sociological, political, and technological contexts of education, especially regarding issues of equity and teacher expertise. A new era of school integration efforts may…

Nice white parents in Nashville

I’ve had a lot of conversations recently about Serial’s Nice White Parents podcast. And, understandably so- it’s a remarkably engaging story about something felt by most people (everyone?) but rarely discussed in such a public kind of way. It’s made my day job a little easier- instead of going through some convoluted explanation about contemporary…

Erika Wilson on Monopolizing Whiteness

What if the equal protection clause wasn’t the primary basis for school integration lawsuits? This week’s guest author – Erika Wilson, a Law Professor at the University of North Carolina – looks at perhaps unintended consequences of our long reliance on equal protection arguments. In a forthcoming paper, she presents an alternative that speaks to…

Suburban Segregation: A tale of two rezonings

I’m excited to feature a post from Dian Mawene, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who recently published new research about a school rezoning effort in a diversifying Wisconsin suburb. Coauthored with Aydin Bal, the piece explores overlapping forms of segregation at the neighborhood, school district and school levels, all of which is…

Segregation, protest & a window for change: Model legislation from NCSD

A few weeks before Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, the National Coalition on School Diversity (NCSD) published a list of model state school integration policies. It was important then, but it takes on added significance in light of the protests that have followed Floyd’s murder, the heightened attention to racial justice and segregation, and repeated…

New Project & Data Request: Attendance zone boundary changes

A new project out of Penn State University – co-led by Erica Frankenberg (professor of education and director of the Center for Education and Civil Rights, home of this blog) and Chris Fowler (professor of geography) – aims to collect longitudinal data on school attendance zone boundaries from school districts across the country. The researchers…