At least 38 states have created service areas or "districts" for each of their community colleges. However, little is known about the geographic boundaries of community college districts and the policymaking process that defines them. We studied state policy documents nationally and the actual district boundaries of Texas community…

Automatic admissions policies (AAPs, "percent plans") redistribute college-going opportunities across segregated high schools to diversify college enrollments, increasing opportunities at predominantly minority high schools. If students "game" AAPs by attending schools with increased opportunities, AAPs could alter racial…

At least 38 states have created service areas or "districts" for each of their community colleges. However, little is known about the geographic boundaries of community college districts, the political process that defines them, and how they relate to institutional racial segregation. Given this dearth of knowledge, we studied nearly 150…

School district boundaries define more than just the area where a certain group of children attends a given set of schools. They also determine the taxing jurisdiction that supports those schools with local property taxes. Big differences in property value can lead to large funding gaps, even between neighboring districts. These disparities in…

In "The Other American Dilemma," Rubén Donato and Jarrod Hanson examine the experiences of Mexican immigrants, Mexican Americans, and Hispanos/as in their schools and communities between 1912 and 1953. Drawing from the Mexican Archives located in Mexico City and by venturing outside of the Southwest, their examinations of specific…

Absent a nationwide plan for universal public prekindergarten, states and districts have taken various approaches to increasing access to school-based educational opportunities for their youngest learners. Though some of these programs have focused on making public prekindergarten available to all families, others have targeted families most in…

This paper examines the emergence of black progressive organizations and their relationship to public black colleges. Amid violent disfranchisement in the early 1900s, black education activists collaborated with other educators to host conferences, develop programs, and mobilize delegations on broader issues of concern to black Americans,…

This report shows that the segregation of Black students has increased in almost every region of the nation, and that Black students in many of nation's largest school districts have little access to or interaction with White, Asian or middle-class students. The report documents substantial Black enrollment in suburban schools, but high levels of…

Each year, the federal government provides billions of dollars in support for low-income families in their acquisition of housing. In this analysis, we examine how several of these subsidized housing programs, public housing and Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) financed housing, relate to patterns of school segregation for children. We use…

The purpose of this research is to examine the prevalence of racially diverse high schools in order to understand the conditions that create or inhibit the existence of diverse and equitable schools. We analyzed Texas state demographic data for schools in order to understand the scarcity of racially diverse campuses. We then utilized mapping and…

Sixty-five years after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the federal and judicial role in school desegregation has declined. In a more difficult political and legal environment, it has fallen on school districts to develop and implement voluntary integration plans through diversity-minded student assignment…

Whether students of color are more or less likely to be identified as having disabilities than similarly situated students who are White in U.S. states with histories of de jure and de facto racial segregation is currently unknown. Unadjusted analyses of large samples of students attending elementary and middle schools in the U.S. South yielded…

"Gerrymandering" is known best as a tool to manipulate boundaries for voting districts, but school districts have long used the same tool to manipulate school boundaries. The author used geospatial techniques--mapping various kinds of demographic data onto school boundaries--to examine public school attendance zones and their effect on…

As a requirement for a federal neighborhood revitalization grant, the authors trained resident interviewers and coordinated the conduct of more than 1000 door-to-door interviews of a stratified random sample. The targeted area was a multiethnic, lower income neighborhood that continues to experience the effects of past segregation. Monitoring and…

Social justice leadership has become a popular topic and catchphrase in the field of educational leadership. However, most scholarly and empirical contributions have ignored the inherent tensions, challenges and dilemmas associated with the practice of school leadership and the realities principals confront on a daily basis. This is partly because…