Panel:
Exploring the Complexities of School and Neighborhood Integration
(Education)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Our panel brings together a diverse set of scholars, using multiple methodological approaches to examine the complexities of increasing levels of both neighborhood and school integration.
Our panel will begin with an ethnographic portrait of how families from different racial and ethnic backgrounds value neighborhood diversity when selecting a place to raise their children. In “Because the World Consists of Everybody: Parents’ Understanding of Neighborhood Diversity,” the authors draw on 264 in-depth interviews with a diverse group of parents with young children to examine parent preferences for ethnic and racial diversity. They find that across race and ethnic groups a sizeable share of respondents expressed a desire for neighborhood racial and ethnic diversity, motivating their preference by describing the benefits of diversity for their child's development. However, they also find that, in practice, perceptions of school district quality played a more decisive role in shaping actual residential outcomes, especially among the most advantaged respondents.
We will then turn our focus from families to school districts, examining how current school policies impact neighborhood and school integration. Specifically, in the second paper, “School Attendance Boundary Policy and the Segregation of Public Schools in the US,” the author explores the implications of school district’s reliance on attendance zones for school integration. Through the creation of counterfactual attendance zone boundaries that imitate “neighborhood schools,” he finds that the mean district achieves a level of integration which approximately matches a “neighborhood schools” plan. However, he finds that of the minority of districts that deviate from the counterfactual level of integration, these plans appear to encourage school integration beyond what would be expected given current levels of residential segregation.
In the third paper, “Segregated neighborhoods, segregated schools: Do charters break a stubborn link?” the authors examine whether the growth in school choice through the expansion of charter schools has led to increased neighborhood and/or school integration. Through the use of multilevel structural equations models, they show that charter presence substantially increases school segregation but modestly decreases residential segregation. Additionally, they find that only white-black segregation is affected by charter school expansions.
We will conclude by taking a closer look at integrated schools over time, describing the nature of districts and schools that are able to maintain stable racial integration. In “When is School Integration Stable?” the authors construct measures of integrated schools, and then examine patterns of school integration between 1995 and 2015. They find that over one quarter of public schools have remained integrated during this time period, and that over 40 percent of the schools that remain integrated are shared by white and black students.
Our chair, Leslie Colwell, from the Colorado Children’s Campaign, will bring real world experience from the work she has done with Denver Public School to increase integration. Our two discussants, Heather Schwartz and Dionissi Aliprantis, have extensive backgrounds in the area of school and neighborhood segregation. We hope this conversation will shed light on new pathways towards neighborhood and school integration.
