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
code			12/27/2022 10:26:AM
data			05/17/2022 09:25:PM
output			04/07/2022 11:28:AM
README.pdf	application/pdf	161.2 KB	12/27/2022 05:23:AM

Project Citation:

Monarrez, Tomas. Data and Code for: School Attendance Boundaries and the Segregation of Schools in the US. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-06-20. https://doi.org/10.3886/E152083V1

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

Time Period(s): 2013 – 2014 (2013-14 School Year, 2010 Decennial Census)

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

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-06-20]

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