Suburban Racial Change and Suburban School Segregation, 1987-95

Paying for School Choice: Availability Differences among Local Education Markets

“…If school zone discontinuity according to parents' educational level, housing price, and household income has restricted many students' access to better-resourced and more diverse schools (Bayer & McMillan, 2012;Black, 1999;Bodine et al, 2008;Gibbons & Machin, 2006;Kenn, 2001;D.E. Mitchell et al, 2010;Reardon & Yun, 2001), then empowering parents to choose children' s schools with their own hands has the potential to improve overall access to education by weakening geographical advantages or disadvantages and opening up invisible boundaries between communities.…”

“…Others have indicated irreconcilable disparities in school funding and resources between school districts, stemming from the financial structure of traditional public schools that rely on property and income taxes from the area in which they are located (Bodine et al, 2008;Kenn, 2001;D.E. Mitchell, Batie, & Mitchell, 2010;Reardon & Yun, 2001). Such differences often result in widening academic achievement gaps (Rothwell, 2012).…”

Racial Residential Segregation: A Fundamental Cause of Racial Disparities in Health

“…23 One recent study found that as a growing number of minority families moved to the suburbs from 1987 to 1995, residential segregation there led to increased levels of segregation in suburban schools. 24 The concentration of poverty, not racial composition per se, is the basic cause of the problems that plague segregated schools. Compared to schools in middle-class areas, segregated schools have lower average test scores, fewer students in advanced placement courses, more limited curricula, less qualified teachers, less access to serious academic counseling, fewer connections with colleges and employers, more deteriorated buildings, higher levels of teen pregnancy, and higher dropout rates.…”

Income Diversity within Neighborhoods and Very Low-Income Families

“…It assumes its minimum value of zero when only one of the groups is represented in the neighborhood. Many scholars have confirmed the usefulness of the entropy index and its numerous desirable technical qualities, such as handling multiple groups readily, easy calculation, and decomposability (Allison, 1978;Fischer, 2003;Iceland, 2004;James and Taeuber, 1985;Reardon and Firebaugh, 2002;Reardon and Yun, 2001;White, 1986). Entropy has been chosen as the preferred measure in a wide range of studies on income inequality and economic segregation (Firebaugh, 1999;Fischer, 2003;Fischer et al, 2004;Fong and Shibuya, 2000;Harsman and Quigley, 1995;Jones and Weinberg, 2000;Talen, 2006;Telles, 1995;White, 1986), and we follow in this tradition.…”