School rezoning is the process of drawing and redrawing school attendance boundaries (SABs). However, studies explicitly focused on changing SABs through rezoning or other mechanisms are spread across multiple bodies of literature. Rezoning is also a politically contentious issue governed by local school boards, tying it to conceptual work on the…

The authors argue that from the perspective of distributive justice, school district fragmentation--meaning both the existing reality of hyper-proliferated school districts and the practice of further breaking larger districts into smaller ones--produces three distinct injustices. First, it undermines racial solidarity and the bonds of community.…

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to examine the prevalence and growth of segregation in K-12 public schools. This report examined the extent of (1) racial, ethnic, and economic divisions in K-12 public schools; and (2) district secession and any resulting student demographic shifts. To determine the extent of divisions along…

This is the executive summary for the full report, "Crossing the Line: Segregation and Resource Inequality between America's School Districts." School funding debates in the United States tend to center on how much money school districts should receive, and through what policies and formulas. But they almost never focus on the district…

Most U.S. school districts draw "attendance boundaries" to define catchment areas that assign students to schools near their homes, often recapitulating neighborhood demographic segregation in schools. Focusing on elementary schools, we ask: How much might we reduce school segregation by redrawing attendance boundaries? Combining parent…

When unified status was granted to numerous school districts, school boards developed redistricting plans to implement neighborhood schools. Social justice advocates decried these plans as they reversed over 40 years of progress, as many of these efforts resulted in resegregating schools homogenously grouped by race and wealth. Using piecewise and…

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…

For the first time since 1968, local education authorities in Washington, D.C. embarked on a contentious process of engaging communities as part of a comprehensive revision of the city's student assignment and school boundary policies in 2013. Despite the potentially divisive nature of the issue, public deliberation went beyond re-drawing school…

School segregation is one of the most enduring inequities in US public education, reinforcing racial and ethnic gaps in academic and socioeconomic outcomes. School boundaries, whether between districts or between schools within a district, often help perpetuate school segregation in otherwise racially and ethnically diverse cities and…

Purpose: This study investigated how superintendents lead the process of within-district racial and socioeconomic integration. Design/methodology/approach: The researchers used Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology to analyze interviews with superintendents, documents and videos from four school districts in suburban, southeastern…

This study of a multi-district superintendency in rural Minnesota reveals how schools act as spaces where community boundaries expand as a result of partnership and collaboration. The project, informed by grounded theory, seeks to fill a key gap in understanding the experiences of school staff and community members in multi-district resource…

School rezoning, or redistricting, is the process by which school boards draw and redraw school attendance boundaries. These boundaries are key drivers of racial and economic school segregation but can also work to ameliorate it. Using a critical orientation to narrative policy analysis, this study examined the cultural politics of race and…

Background: Scholars have increasingly expressed concern about a new secessionist movement, grounded in a doctrine of localism and facilitated by permissive state policies regarding the formation of new school districts. Critics contend that school district secessions threaten to exacerbate patterns of segregation and inequality in schools.…

Leaders of education policy continue to decentralize school districts, particularly in predominately large urban districts, despite mixed results from this reform. In this article, we seek to explain how decentralization came to fruition through the policymaking process in one of the largest and most diverse districts in the United States that…

This study explored the impact of rural school district consolidation in eastern North Carolina. Wilkins County is a low-income, low-performing county with an average daily membership (ADM) of 1,501 students. This county suffers from rural population decline, decreasing ADM, and is categorized as low performing, with only two of the six schools…