Ebbs and Flows: Revisiting the Relationship between Student Mobility, Segregation, and Neighborhoods

Narratives of Race in School Rezoning: How the Politics of Whiteness Shape Belonging, Leadership Decisions, and School Attendance Boundaries

“…These boundaries form the catchment or residential areas from which schools draw students, with approximately 85% of public school children attending their neighborhood public school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). Given the coupling between residential and school segregation (Frankenberg, 2013; Owens, 2017; Welsh, 2019), redrawing attendance boundaries can work to exacerbate or ameliorate racial and economic segregation in schools.…”

“…These boundaries form the catchment or residential areas from which schools draw students, with approximately 85% of public school children attending their neighborhood public school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). Given the coupling between residential and school segregation (Frankenberg, 2013;Owens, 2017;Welsh, 2019), redrawing attendance boundaries can work to exacerbate or ameliorate racial and economic segregation in schools.School rezoning, also referred to as redistricting, is the process by which school boards draw and redraw attendance boundaries within districts (Bartels & Donato, 2009;Siegel-Hawley et al, 2017). Importantly, under the present legal context, rezoning is one race-conscious policy mechanism that can reduce racial and economic segregation and bring together disparate neighborhoods and associated resources (Frankenberg et al, 2017;Saporito & Van Riper, 2016).…”

Siting Schools, Choosing Students? Protecting White Habitus Through Charter School Recruitment

“…As Henig (2018:6) explains, "charters were seen by early proponents as a way to loosen that tie between where one lived and where one's children went to school." Consistent with this belief, there is evidence that school choice options can weaken parents' emphasis on schools in neighborhood selection: collegeeducated white families with school choice options are more likely to relocate to urban neighborhoods (Pearman and Swain 2017; see also Welsh 2019). Using enrollment data, scholars find that white families choose whiter charter schools than the schools their children previously attended (Frankenberg et al 2017;Stein 2015).…”

From the “Mississippi of the West” to the “City of Second Chances”: Contextualizing the Racial and Ethnic Composition of Las Vegas

“…However, in a report examining lending practices throughout the Las Vegas Metro, Lauber (2011) suggested that both black and Hispanic potential home buyers may have been racially steered towards North Las Vegas. Supporting this possibility, other Las Vegas suburbs, such as Henderson, gained much lower proportions of black and Hispanic populations (Welsh, 2020). As such, racial barriers seem to have persisted in the process of suburbanization, yielding disparate racial and ethnic populations between different Las Vegas suburbs.…”

“…Nearly two decades later, half of those schools suffered low academic rankings, and within the higher quality magnet schools, black students were underrepresented (Pak, 2018). Contemporarily, high levels of within-year student mobility-defined as students switching schools during the school year-concentrate in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods on the border between Las Vegas and North Las Vegas (Welsh, 2020). Welsh notes that such movement among low-income families is mostly precipitated by financial necessity, and thus rarely results in students transferring to higher quality schools (2019).…”