While suburban schools across the country have become increasingly racially and economically diverse in recent decades, many remain highly segregated. School attendance zone boundaries (AZBs) play a critical role in shaping these patterns of within-district segregation. AZBs are especially important in suburban areas with growing and diversifying student populations. Using novel, longitudinal AZB data dating back to 1990, authors Sarah Asson, Erica Frankenberg, Christopher Fowler, and Ruth Krebs Buck studied the relationship between AZBs and segregation over time in three large suburban districts. They found AZB changes have not yet been realized as a force for desegregation. To do so will require more explicit action prioritizing racial and economic diversity.
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Demographic Change and School Attendance Zone Boundary Changes: Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia, Between 1990 and 2010
We analyze the relationship between residential populations, school attendance zone boundaries (AZBs), and school enrollments in two large, countywide suburban districts, Fairfax County, Virginia and Montgomery County, Maryland, from 1990-2010. A steep decline in white, school-age children and an increase in black, Hispanic, and Asian children in both neighborhoods and the schools that serve them suggests that white households reluctant to send their children to diversifying schools are exiting (or never entering) these districts entirely rather than sorting within them. AZB changes, often due to the opening of new schools, affect a large portion of both districts, but boundary changes are associated with only a small portion of increased segregation observed in both schools and neighborhoods between 1990 and 2010. Our findings speak to the complex, multidirectional relationships between demographic trends and AZBs in diversifying, growing suburbs.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1918277
- PAR ID:
- 10475042
- Publisher / Repository:
- Russell Sage Foundation
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2377-8253
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 75 to 103
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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