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Communities and School Ratings: Examining Geography of Opportunity in an Urban School District Located in a Resource-Rich City

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Abstract

Research on geography of opportunity documents how residential patterns influence students’ access to equitable educational opportunities and resources. This scholarship often highlights how geography reinforces educational inequity in urban school districts located in resource-constrained cities. Yet, less research has explored how the geography of educational opportunity and resources plays out in school districts located in fast-growing and opportunity-rich cities. As such, this descriptive analysis uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map the spatial distribution of high schools considered high-quality according to their state accountability rating by race and socioeconomic status in an urban school district located in an opportunity-rich city in the Northeastern U.S. We also examine how district transfer and selective enrollment policies as well as distances to other public and charter high schools rated high-quality influence the geography of educational opportunity. Our findings suggest that spatial arrangements and district policies impact patterns of unequal educational opportunity and resources across the district for children of color who live in low-income communities, despite being located in an opportunity-rich city. This study concludes with implications for policy and future research.

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Notes

  1. We acknowledge the range of assets and strengths in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty.

  2. john powell spells his name with all lower case letters. So to respect that, we also spell his name with lower case letters.

  3. In this paper, we use pseudonyms to describe all states, cities, school districts, schools, attendance boundaries, and neighborhoods.

  4. It is also important to note that attendance zones are in part created by topography, they are often fluid and change year to year, community input can also impact attendance lines, and they are often hotly contested and impact housing and transportation decisions.

  5. In this paper, we use the terms African American and Black interchangeably to refer to people of African descent.

  6. We personally do not advance the term “other” but this is the language that the school district uses.

  7. Education researchers commonly use GIS to generate easy-to-understand maps that can inform a range of school, community, and policy stakeholders, and increase our understanding about education within the context of geography (Tate and Hogrebe 2011). Hence, GIS is fitting for this study because it will provide a way to map and “examine questions of physical space—the geography of schools, homes, neighborhoods, and districts—as primary consideration” (Lubienski and Dougherty 2009, p. 612).

  8. We also mapped JPSD magnet schools, but their boundaries are not geographically fixed.

  9. A choropleth map is a thematic map that colors and shades areas based on their proportion to the measurement of the data and variables that are being displayed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Administration, University of Texas at Austin, George I. Sanchez Building, 1912 Speedway D5400, Austin, TX, 78712-1604, USA

    Terrance L. Green

  2. Educational Policy and Planning Program, University of Texas at Austin, George I. Sanchez Building, 3rd Floor, 1912 Speedway D5400, Austin, TX, 78712-1604, USA

    Joanna Sánchez & Emily Germain

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  1. Terrance L. Green
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  2. Joanna Sánchez
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Correspondence to Terrance L. Green.

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Green, T.L., Sánchez, J. & Germain, E. Communities and School Ratings: Examining Geography of Opportunity in an Urban School District Located in a Resource-Rich City. Urban Rev 49, 777–804 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-017-0421-1

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