Sidewalks for Students: Google Street View Measures of Walkability around Schools and Chronic Absenteeism Rates

• In Event: 30816 - Space and Place

Abstract

This study brings together ideas from education, public health, and urban planning to assess whether the walkability of the built environment around schools is related to their chronic absenteeism rates. We do so at the national level using data from the 2018-2019 NCES Common Core of Data and the Office of Civil Rights along with a novel measure of walkability based on computer vision-derived estimates of the physical environment captured in Google Street View images. We compare schools in the same district to one another and find that schools with a higher proportion of images with sidewalks and street lights within one mile of their location tend to have lower chronic absenteeism rates. The magnitude of these effects varies somewhat by schools in urban, suburban, and rural locations. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the relationship between physical infrastructure and educational opportunities. They also support the idea that the built environment can be an important structural barrier to attendance, even for students who live close by.

Authors

• Julia Burdick-Will, Johns Hopkins University

• Michael D. M. Bader, Johns Hopkins University

• Quynh C. Nguyen, University of Maryland School of Public Health