Reducing segregation of public school districts
Topics:
Keywords: segregation; public education
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract
Authors:
Ran Wei, University of California, Riverside
Xin Feng, University of Oklahoma
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
Abstract
Racial segregation in public education has been declared as unconstitutional for over 60 years in
the United States. Yet many public school districts remain largely separate and unequal. A
commonly used approach to reduce school segregation is redelineating school attendance zones
to create more racially diverse classrooms. However, there is a need for a school districting
approach that can minimize racial or socioeconomic segregation at the district level. In this paper,
we develop a spatial optimization model that delineates school attendance zones with the aim of
minimizing racial segregation of school district to enable the assessment of the impacts of school
attendance zones on the racial segregation of school district. Applications of this model to
Riverside Unified School District (RUSD) and San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) in
California, USA show that it is possible to reduce racial segregation by 64% at RUSD and 56%
at SDUSD, demonstrating the potential of the proposed model.
Reducing segregation of public school districts
Category
Paper Abstract
