School Rezoning: Exploring the Significance of Demographic Changes on Disproportionality

• In Event: Rezoning, Demographic Change, and Segregation in Diverse U.S. Cities

Abstract

This study offers an interdisciplinary framework to cross-fertilize disproportionality and critical geography. It delves into changes in elementary school attendance zones in Wells School District to demonstrate how a high-stakes education policy such as school attendance zones might contribute to racial and class disproportionality. I analyzed the dissimilarity index at school and neighborhood level to examine how patterns of neighborhood segregation related to school segregation. I also analyzed the district’s suspension rate to understand how the changes of student demography related to the district’s suspension rate. The results were: First, where students lived were more segregated than the schools they attended. Second, regardless of the district’s effort to create diversity, African American students in predominantly White schools were disproportionally suspended.

Authors

• Dian Mawene, University of New Hampshire

• Aydin Bal, University of Wisconsin - Madison