Long-Term Trends in School District Gerrymandering and a New Approach to Assessing Boundary Irregularity

• In Event: 51.078 - MTCC Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: 51.078-5 - Geographic and Geospatial Considerations and Contexts of Inequality

Abstract

In this paper we propose a new approach to measuring the geographic compactness of American public school districts and attendance zones. Through the geospatial analysis of historical maps, we generate multiple compactness measures for a sample of school district shapes created during the earliest years of American public schooling in the state of California. We then use these shapes and measures of their compactness as a standard for assessing the district shapes in the present. We find that in the state of California, school district boundaries and attendance zones shapes in the state today are less compact than the original boundaries created in the nineteenth century.

Author

• Matthew Kelly, The Pennsylvania State University - University Park