Saporito Salvatore, Van Riper David
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA.
Minnesota Population Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Soc Curr. 2016 Mar;3(1):64-83. doi: 10.1177/2329496515604637. Epub 2015 Sep 10.
This research investigates if and how much the shapes of school attendance zones contribute to racial segregation in schools. We find that the typical school attendance zone is relatively compact and resembles a square-like shape. Compact zones typically draw children from local residential areas, and since local areas are often racially homogeneous, this suggests that high levels of racial segregation in the largest school districts are largely structured by existing residential segregation. Still, this study finds that the United States contains some attendance zones with highly irregular shapes-some of which are as irregular as the most irregular Congressional District. Although relatively rare, attendance zones that are highly irregular in shape almost always contain racially diverse student populations. This racial diversity contributes to racial within school districts. These findings contradict recent theoretical and empirical scholarship arguing that irregularly shaped zones contribute to racial segregation in schools. Our findings suggest that most racial segregation in school attendance zones is driven by large-scale segregation across residential areas rather than a widespread practice among school districts to exacerbate racial segregation by delineating irregularly shaped attendance zones.
本研究调查了学校招生区域的形状是否以及在多大程度上导致了学校中的种族隔离。我们发现，典型的学校招生区域相对紧凑，类似方形。紧凑的区域通常吸引来自当地居民区的儿童，而且由于当地往往种族单一，这表明最大的学区中高水平的种族隔离在很大程度上是由现有的居住隔离造成的。尽管如此，本研究发现美国有一些形状非常不规则的招生区域——其中一些与最不规则的国会选区一样不规则。虽然相对罕见，但形状非常不规则的招生区域几乎总是包含种族多样的学生群体。这种种族多样性有助于学区内的种族融合。这些发现与最近的理论和实证研究相矛盾，这些研究认为形状不规则的区域会导致学校中的种族隔离。我们的研究结果表明，学校招生区域中的大多数种族隔离是由居民区之间的大规模隔离驱动的，而不是学区通过划定形状不规则的招生区域来加剧种族隔离的普遍做法。
