A digital information explosion has transformed cities' residential and educational markets in ways that are still being uncovered. Although urban stratification scholars have increasingly scrutinized whether emerging digital platforms disrupt or reproduce longstanding segregation patterns, direct links between one theoretically important form of…

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…

In the largest U.S. metropolitan areas, suburban school districts enroll 14.4 million students, far more than the 6 million students enrolled in the same metros' urban districts. In fact, students enrolled in the suburban school districts surrounding the 25 largest metropolitan areas represent roughly 30% of the nation's entire public school…

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…

Well over six decades after the Supreme Court declared "separate but equal" schools to be unconstitutional in "Brown v. Board of Education," schools remain heavily segregated by race and ethnicity. The lack of progress in integrating schools: (1) depresses education outcomes for black students; (2) widens performance gaps…

Using detailed administrative data for public schools, we document racial and ethnic segregation at the classroom level in North Carolina, a state that has experienced a sharp increase in Hispanic enrollment. We decompose classroom-level segregation in counties into within-school and between-school components. We find that the within-school…

This paper provides the first population-based evidence on how much standardized test scores vary among public school districts within each state and how segregation explains that variation. Using roughly 300 million standardized test score records in math and ELA for grades 3 through 8 from every U.S. public school district during the 2008-09 to…

At a time when democracy is fractured along the fault lines of race, ethnicity, and religion, and when social mobility has stalled, high-quality integrated public schools could take us on a better path forward. Racial and socioeconomic school integration has proven to be one of the most powerful strategies known to educators to improve the lives…

This paper provides a brief overview of key trends in enrollment, demographics, and segregation in California's schools in recent decades. Total public school enrollment has been relatively stable, and charter schools account for an increasing share of public enrollment. The Hispanic share of public enrollment has increased dramatically, and the…

We estimate racial/ethnic achievement gaps in several hundred metropolitan areas and several thousand school districts in the United States using the results of roughly 200 million standardized math and reading tests administered to public school students from 2009-2013. We show that achievement gaps vary substantially, ranging from nearly 0 in…

A founding ideal of American democracy is that merit, not accident of birth, should determine individuals' income and social status. Schools have assumed a major role in judging key elements of merit among young people--namely, academic skills, hard work, self-discipline, and cooperative behavior. Schools do so mainly by evaluating students in a…

This year's KIDS COUNT report delves into disparities in child well-being based on race and ethnicity in an effort to shine a light on issues where Colorado can and must do better at creating equitable opportunities for children. The disparities seen in many areas of child well-being did not just happen by coincidence; nor are they the result of…