Student Transportation Inequality in Los Angeles: A Research-Practice Partnership Project

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: How Research-Practice Partnership Collaboration Can Inform Education Policy and Practice: Examples from Los Angeles

Abstract

Purpose
Across the U.S., 36% of children take the school bus to and from school each day. But in some states that figure is much lower; for example, in California only 8% are school bus riders. This research-practice partnership study with a large urban school district in the southwest U.S. describes the ways students commute to and from school, and the student, school, and neighborhood characteristics that are associated with those commuting patterns. Its goal is to uncover potential gaps and disadvantages in school commuting beyond the miles from home to school, so that those results can inform both scholarship and practice.

Theoretical framework
Though most education research focuses on the school day as a range from first to last bell, students’ reality is that their days begin when they leave their home and end when they return home or get to their first after-school destination—in other words, it includes transportation. Several scholars have advocated for transportation to be considered part of the child’s educational ecosystem (Lenhoff et al., 2022), in line with Bronfenbrenner’s (1976) Ecological Systems Theory. Important in that ecosystem is that districts equitably distribute resources to ensure that students with the greatest need are provided with services like transportation to better enable student attendance.

Data & methods
This study uses data collected by the school district using survey questions originally requested by the city’s transportation department and then revised for this project. The survey asked students in grades 6–12 about how they traveled to and from school (e.g., by family automobile, carpool, school bus, walking, bicycling, or public transit). After connecting the survey data to student administrative data, I answer the following research question using discrete choice modeling: Does how students’ travel to and from school vary by age, race, socioeconomic status, neighborhood, the type of school they attend, or receipt of specialized student services (e.g., homeless students, foster youth)?

Results
Analyses have just begun, but results will be available in time for paper submission. I hypothesize that higher-income and white students are more likely to commute by family car, while lower-income, Black, and Latino/a students are more likely to commute by walking and transit, controlling for distance.

Scholarly and practical significance
Education policy scholars have only recently begun to study transportation as a potential determinant of student attendance. In most cases, studies have only examined eligibility for school-sponsored transportation and not the actual use of it. This study’s results will contribute an additional layer of understanding by revealing why students who are eligible for school-sponsored transportation may or may not use it. This project will also help the study district better understand students’ commuting behaviors, so it can target resources to support students and schools where commuting may be particularly difficult. If I find that students who walk or take transit to school—which take more time per mile—are disproportionately low-income, Black, and/or Latino/a, these results would have important equity implications, and the district may want to consider providing school buses to ameliorate.

Author

• Samuel Joseph Speroni, University of California - Los Angeles