Data and Code for: School Attendance Boundaries and the Segregation of Schools in the US

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Tomas Monarrez, Urban Institute

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
BlkShpTabmerge.m	text/x-matlab	1.7 KB	04/04/2022 04:16:PM
_analysis_master.do	text/plain	557 bytes	04/06/2022 02:45:PM
_build_master.do	text/plain	866 bytes	04/07/2022 02:51:AM
brewermap.m	text/x-matlab	20.3 KB	10/22/2022 05:23:PM
build_acsvars_lealevel.do	text/plain	4.1 KB	04/07/2022 05:20:AM
build_blocks.m	text/x-matlab	3.3 KB	10/25/2021 06:37:AM
build_census_blk.do	text/plain	2 KB	04/06/2022 06:11:PM
build_cms_sabpanel_voronoi.m	text/x-matlab	10.2 KB	11/01/2021 11:11:AM
build_master.m	text/x-objcsrc	508 bytes	04/07/2022 05:41:AM
build_norc-gss.do	text/plain	7.2 KB	12/27/2022 05:06:AM

Project Description

Summary:

School segregation is determined by residential sorting, but also by policy choices such as the drawing of attendance boundaries and school siting. This paper develops a new approach to understanding the importance of each of these factors, by combining detailed census data with attendance boundary maps for nearly 1,600 school districts. I find that residential segregation explains more than 100 percent of school segregation. On average, attendance boundaries create 5 percent more integration than a distance-minimizing baseline. School siting plays almost no role. Some local governments act to mitigate school segregation, although their impact is small compared to residential choice.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: segregation; public schools; economics; residential segregation

JEL Classification:
      H75 State and Local Government: Health; Education; Welfare; Public Pensions
      I24 Education and Inequality
      J15 Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

Geographic Coverage: National

Universe: US public schools

Data Type(s): census/enumeration data; geographic information system (GIS) data; observational data; survey data

Methodology

Data Source:

The School Attendance Boundary Survey (SABS) was an experimental survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) with assistance from the U.S. Census Bureau to collect school attendance boundaries for the 2013-2014 and 2015-2016 school years. The SABS collection includes boundaries for more than 70,000 schools in over 12,000 school districts throughout the U.S.
2010 Decennial Census data on census block population breakdowns by race and ethnicity, obtained from the National Historical Geographic Information System.

Unit(s) of Observation: School / School attendance zone

Geographic Unit: Census block

Related Publications

Download this project

Published Versions

V1 [2023-06-20]

Export Metadata

Dublin Core

DDI 2.5

Report a Problem

Found a serious problem with the data, such as disclosure risk or copyrighted content? Let us know.

This material is distributed exactly as it arrived from the data depositor. ICPSR has not checked or processed this material. Users should consult the investigator(s) if further information is desired.