The ethnic and racial makeup of the United States has changed during the last several decades. Scholars have qualitatively shown how these changes affect school districts but have not identified their scale. We examine residential demographic change using a novel dataset derived from a geographic technique that leverages satellite imagery with…

This research explores White teachers' reflections around race talk, surfacing their interests in engaging students in conversations about race as well as their hesitations. The five participating teachers had volunteered for a unique program that connected classrooms in urban de facto segregated schools for the enactment of common projects. Race…

Suburbs were once a haven for advantaged, White families to avoid city life and access high-status schools. This urban-suburban divide, however, has changed in recent decades as suburban communities (and their school districts) have diversified. This study provides an updated cross-sectional portrait of recent racial-ethnic segregation and…

In this research brief, we describe and decompose school segregation by race and ethnicity in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, in which we include: the District of Columbia; Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax County in Virginia; and Montgomery County and Prince George's County in Maryland. We find only modest segregation within all but one…

This study contributes to the growing body of research concerning the strategic geographic positioning of traditional charter schools (TCS) in urban areas and their segregative effect by considering economist Michael Porter's concept of business clusters, in which businesses 'cluster' to maximize their potential profit and to gain access to a…

Eight years ago, in 2014, the Civil Rights Project issued a report that raised awareness about the dire state of segregation in New York State and, in particular, New York City schools. That report spurred substantial activism, primarily led by student groups, parents, teachers, and administrators, which has been influential in the current…

New York City public schools, serving nearly one million students, are some of the most segregated in the nation. The Bronx, one of the poorest school districts in New York City, serving students who are 83% Black or Hispanic, has been plagued by persistent racial disproportionalities. Top-down change efforts have consistently failed. Improvement…

This study seeks to identify changes in neighborhood and school segregation during the age of rapidly expanding school choice. Prior to 1991, public-school choice was limited. While magnet schools existed and a number of interdistrict transfer programs were in place, few public-school students left their neighborhoods to receive an education.…

New York City's Pre-K for All (PKA) is the nation's largest universal early childhood initiative, serving over 64,000 four-year-olds annually. Stemming from the program's choice architecture as well as the city's stark residential segregation, PKA programs are extremely segregated by child race/ethnicity. Our current study explores the complex…

Diversity is core to what makes many cities vibrant, dynamic, adaptive and strong. Recently, Boston has gotten much more racially diverse, evolving from being only 20 percent people of color back in 1970 to 56 percent of color today. However, there's a way in which the rich tapestry of the city has eroded: Boston is rapidly losing families with…

Recent research has determined that racial segregation within school districts has decreased, on average, over the past two decades, even as segregation between school districts has persisted. Although case studies have documented White families' return to urban public schools, with potential implications for segregation patterns, quantitative…

This study examines the impact of a university-high school debate mentoring program on educational outcomes of high school graduates attending a racially segregated school in New Jersey, USA. Evidence shows that from 2011 to 2018, participants had stronger grade point average growth, higher cumulative grade point averages, and higher SAT scores…

National philanthropies have recently played a prominent role in spending on U.S. urban school board elections, largely seeking to promote candidates who support charter schools. In Atlanta in 2017, 30 candidates competed for nine open school board seats. One practice has been to fund intermediary organisations (IOs) (e.g. advocacy groups,…

We conduct descriptive and inferential analyses of publicly available Common Core of Data (CCD) to examine segregation at the local, state, and national levels. Nationally, we find that higher percentages of charter students of every race attend intensely segregated schools. The highest levels of racial isolation are at the primary level for…

The purpose of this research brief is to describe racial and ethnic school segregation in the District of Columbia, within and between the private and public sectors (including charter schools). Using different measures, we find, unsurprisingly, a high degree of segregation within both sectors. Total segregation among private schools is driven…