Stable Attendance Zone Boundaries and Mobility Residential Patterns: The Case of Richland 01

• In Event: Understanding the Changing Relationships Between School Attendance Boundaries and Student Populations

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to examine how emerging residential patterns interact with relatively stable school attendance zone boundaries (AZBs) to shape within district student and residential populations, through the case study of Richland 01 District in South Carolina.

Theoretical Framework: We apply a mobilities lens in which to examine processes of residential and student mobility in Richland 01. In applying a mobilities lens we seek to track the “power of discourses, practices, and infrastructures of mobility in creating the effects (and affects) of both movement and stasis” (Sheller, 2014, p. 6; Author, 2018). We examine in this research the effects of both local movement and stasis on residential and school demographics and, furthermore, the interaction of residential patterns with stable school attendance zones. While changes to school catchments areas are a relatively common district response to changing local demographics, Richland 01 AZBs remained unchanged since the 1990s. Through the examination of Richland 01 we are, therefore, able to examine how local residential patterns, in the absence of district intervention, can directly shape the distribution of students and educational opportunity within local districts.

Data and Analysis: For this case study (Yin, 2018), we will use Longitudinal School Attendance Boundaries data collected alongside U.S. Census (1990, 2000, 2010, 2019) and National Center for Education Statistics school data. We tabulate individual decennial census survey responses to AZB level and conduct longitudinal analysis on various local population census demographic measures (such as race) within Richland 01 district and school attendance zone boundaries for 1990, 2000, and 2010. We, further, conduct exposure index analysis to measure racial residential isolation and exposure in AZBs from 1990-2010.

Longitudinal residential data will be then compared with school demographic data to determine how residential patterns are related to school-level trends. We will measure school segregation in Richland 01 from 1990-2018 and also examine student population trends in adjacent school districts to understand regional developments.

Finally, documents such as newspapers and school board meeting notes will also be gathered and analyzed to contextualize residential population characteristics observed in spatial analysis.

Initial Results: From 1989 to 2018, the student population at Richland 01 declined by 14 percent, but district population losses were not racially balanced (see Table 1).

While residential and AZB analysis is ongoing, initial analysis of school segregation in the district shows that black students are very racially isolated, and both black and white students have become more racially isolated over time (see Table 2).

Significance: We expand on scholarship in the area of residential and school sorting by examining the relationship between residential patterns, school attendance zones, and student populations in the context of a declining local population. This research, furthermore, highlights the need for education stakeholders to continually assess how school attendance zone boundaries, stable over time or not, shape school populations and may be related to both residential and school segregation.

Authors

• Ian Burfoot-Rochford, The Pennsylvania State University

• Annie Maselli, The Pennsylvania State University

• Erica Frankenberg, The Pennsylvania State University

• Kendra Taylor, The Pennsylvania State University