Pushing the Boundaries: The Impact of School Attendance Zone Boundaries on School Segregation in Montgomery County Public Schools
Open Access
- Author:
- Bodenschatz, Hope
- Area of Honors:
- Geography
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Christopher Stiles Fowler, Thesis Supervisor
Roger Michael Downs, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Education
School attendance zones
School segregation
Residential segregation - Abstract:
- Educational opportunity in the United States is intrinsically shaped by location. Among the factors affecting educational opportunity are local residential and school segregation. School attendance zones (referred to in this thesis as SAZs) are bounded regions established by school district officials for assigning students to public schools. SAZs link residential and school segregation and are a potential tool for mitigating (or intensifying) school segregation. My analysis explores ethnoracial differences between Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) elementary school populations and their associated SAZs. From 1990-2010, I found a large decline in White elementary students in MCPS, coupled with an absolute increase in Black and Hispanic elementary students; the majority of MCPS elementary SAZs experienced an increase in percentage of Black and Hispanic elementary-aged children. On average, the percentage of White students enrolled in MCPS elementary schools is lower than the percentage of elementary-aged White children living within the school district, while the opposite is true for Black, Hispanic, and Asian students. Using the dissimilarity index to measure segregation of Black and Hispanic children compared to all other ethnoracial groups, I found that school and SAZ segregation is moderate but increasing in Montgomery County from 1990-2010. Eliminating the effect of SAZ boundary changes from 1990-2000 and 2000-2010 indicated that the school boundary changes that occurred in these time periods, although slightly integrative, in aggregate likely had no meaningful effect on segregation. While White flight appears to have occurred in Montgomery County, SAZs with the largest increases in percentage of Black and Hispanic students actually had higher percentages of White public elementary school enrollment than SAZs with smaller increases, suggesting that large increases in diversity do not necessarily correlate with decreased White enrollment in public schools. Paired schools and religious communities help to provide an explanation for the schools with the largest discrepancies in White public school enrollment and White SAZ residence. SAZs with higher than district-wide average percentages of White children are clustered and isolated from SAZs with lower than district-wide average percentages of White children; this suggests that residential segregation may leave limited scope for school boundary changes to reduce segregation without the use of noncontiguous boundaries.