Attendance Zones Research Articles

After Seattle: Social Science Research and Narrowly Tailored School Desegregation Plans

Background/ContextIn most judicial and social science debates about school desegregation, it is usually assumed that educational and social benefits, if significant, help establish a compelling purpose for school desegregation plans. Less thought has been given to whether the degree of benefits should factor into whether a plan is narrowly tailored according to Supreme Court standards. Hence, many were surprised when Justice Kennedy argued in the Seattle case that school desegregation meets the compelling purpose requirement but that desegregation plans that classified and assigned all students on the basis of race violated the narrow tailoring requirement.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of the StudyThe essay offers a social science rationale for Justice Kennedy's views about narrow tailoring issues and suggests several approaches to desegregation plans that may meet narrow tailoring requirements in the future.SettingFor illustrative purposes, the study uses student achievement data from Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, between 2001 and 2006. The data were obtained from the North Carolina Education Research Data Center at Duke University.Population/Participants/SubjectsFrom a larger North Carolina data set, a cohort was drawn consisting of about 4,050 Black students from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district who began third grade in 2000–2001 and completed the eighth grade in 2005–2006.Research DesignThis essay is primarily an analytic essay with a brief quantitative analysis of student achievement data.Data Collection and AnalysisThe quantitative analysis of achievement data utilized longitudinal methods, tracking socioeconomic-status-adjusted achievement trends for Black students over time.Findings/ResultsA modest relationship between school desegregation and Black student achievement (0.2 standard deviations over 5 years) masks a substantial overlap in test scores for individual students in desegregated versus segregated schools. That is, many Black students in segregated schools score higher than the typical desegregated Black student, and vice versa.Conclusions/RecommendationsUsing evidence from within social science, the authors find that the current design of most mandatory desegregation plans does not fit within the current Court's (especially Justice Kennedy's) view of narrowly tailored plans. However, there are several ways in which school boards and other policy makers can promote school desegregation: considering race when drawing attendance zones, building new schools, closing schools, and locating magnet schools in strategic areas. Further, magnet schools might meet narrow tailoring requirements if race is only one of several factors considered during the application and administration process.

Unmasking the school re-zoning process: Race and class in a Northern Colorado community

In 2007, the US Supreme Court struck down two student school assignment plans, one in Seattle and the other in Jefferson County, Kentucky, which specifically relied on racial classification. School districts can no longer use race-specific criteria to assign students to schools. Accordingly, school districts will have to use alternative methods to diversify their schools. Justice Anthony Kennedy, however, endorsed “race conscious” mechanisms that allow school districts to devise student attendance zones that encompass racially segregated neighborhoods, the building of new schools in mixed neighborhoods and the development of programs in order to integrate schools. We present a case study of a school district in northern Colorado that redrew its attendance zones because it constructed a new middle school in an affluent White neighborhood. We argue that school districts that seek to implement such plans will most likely be challenged, even where physical distance to schools does not present hardships for parents, and where minority and poverty rates are low enough to carry out such goals. School authorities need to be cognizant of the limits and possibilities of race-conscious economic integration plans, and mindful of their potential adverse effects.

Public school choice and integration evidence from Durham, North Carolina

Using evidence from Durham, North Carolina, we examine the impact of school choice programs on racial and class-based segregation across schools. Reasonable assumptions about the distribution of preferences over race, class, and school characteristics suggest that the segregating choices of students from advantaged backgrounds are likely to outweigh any integrating choices by disadvantaged students. The results of our empirical analysis are consistent with these theoretical considerations. Using information on the actual schools students attend and on the schools in their assigned attendance zones, we find that schools in Durham are more segregated by race and class as a result of school choice programs than they would be if all students attended their geographically assigned schools. In addition, we find that the effects of choice on segregation by class are larger than the effects on segregation by race.

“Your Father Works for My Father”: Race, Class, and the Politics of Voluntarily Mandated Desegregation

Background/Context Unlike the situation nationally where desegregation progress is faltering, the school district in Rock Hill, South Carolina, has recently undertaken measures to increase balance in pupil assignment despite considerable local opposition to these measures and the absence of a court order requiring the district to do so. Moreover, while other districts that are also pursuing desegregation increasingly rely on voluntary strategies such as magnets, the Rock Hill school district has relied more on adjusting the boundaries of mandatory attendance zones. This article investigates the conditions and developments that facilitated the school district's voluntarily increasing its desegregation efforts through the use of mandatory strategies. In so doing, the article expands upon our previous work that raises the possibility of a new politics of school desegregation. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The purpose of this essay is to clarify the meaning of voluntary desegregation; to understand the political, demographic, and other conditions that affected desegregation efforts in Rock Hill; and to relate these conditions to broader issues such as the changed (since the civil rights era) relationship between the federal government and local school districts on issues involving desegregation, the relative merits of race- versus class-based public policy, citizen participation in desegregation planning, and the Supreme Court's consideration of voluntary desegregation. Setting Rock Hill, South Carolina Research Design Case study Conclusions/Recommendations We find that Rock Hill's school desegregation efforts were facilitated by a change in school board elections, the current relatively loose coupling of policy venues on issues involving desegregation, the overlap between the interests of Blacks and working-class Whites in the development of a high school reassignment plan, citizen participation in desegregation planning, and effective leadership from the district's administration. The findings from this case study suggest that in some situations class-based public policy is more effective than race-based public policy, but they also caution equally strongly against making any sweeping claims for the generic effectiveness of class-based public policy. The findings also suggest why and how, contrary to the situation in the civil rights era, the workings of local politics in southern school districts may currently be consistent with the pursuit of school desegregation, not antithetical to it. Because of this consistency, a Supreme Court ruling against voluntary desegregation may be viewed as undermining not only the pursuit of equality of opportunity, but also the democratic ideal of popular sovereignty.

Public School Choice and Integration: Evidence from Durham, North Carolina

Using evidence from Durham, North Carolina, we examine the impact of school choice programs on racial and class-based segregation across schools. Theoretical considerations suggest that how choice programs affect segregation will depend not only on the family preferences emphasized in the sociology literature but also on the linkages between student composition, school quality and student achievement emphasized in the economics literature. Reasonable assumptions about the distribution of preferences over race, class, and school characteristics suggest that the segregating choices of students from advantaged backgrounds are likely to outweigh any integrating choices by disadvantaged students. The results of our empirical analysis are consistent with these theoretical considerations. Using information on the actual schools students attend and on the schools in their assigned attendance zones, we find that schools in Durham are more segregated by race and class as a result of school choice programs than they would be if all students attended their geographically assigned schools. In addition, we find that the effects of choice on segregation by class are larger than the effects on segregation by race.

The Public Schools and the Challenge of the Supreme Court's Integration Decision

THIS PAST June, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court declared integration plans in Louisville and Seattle unconstitutional because of their focus on race as one factor in assigning students to schools. The Court's ruling in the Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. (1) and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education cases, therefore, significantly narrowed the options local officials have to create and maintain racially diverse school enrollments and stabilize their districts by making all schools more equal. The legal issue in these cases was whether or not school officials in districts that are no longer (or never were) under a court order to remedy state-sanctioned or de jure segregation can use voluntary efforts to stave off the segregation that would occur if all their students simply went to their neighborhood schools. Both of the districts involved--the Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville and the Seattle Public Schools--had, over time, adjusted their original school desegregation plans from mandatory reassignment of students based on race--e.g., busing-- to programs allowing students and parents to choose among racially diverse schools. Under the choice-oriented programs in these two districts, more than 90% of all students were assigned to their first-or secondchoice schools.1 Furthermore, these school choice programs were designed by locally elected officials who are accountable to their constituents, most of whom strongly supported the plans. (2) Hundreds of school districts across the country have adopted some variation of these plans because such voluntary integration achieves two goals. First, it provides families with choice, and second, it ensures that schools remain fairly balanced in terms of race, resources, reputation, and political clout. This balance prevents instability and the white and middle-class flight that often follows. Despite the obvious benefits of these plans, five of the nine Supreme Court justices declared them unconstitutional, stating that districts cannot take individual students' race into account when assigning them to schools unless the program is specifically designed to remedy the harms of de jure or Jim Crow segregation. The Court ruled that such racial violated the white plaintiffs' 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law because they did not get their first-choice schools if white enrollment in these schools was already too high. At the same time, four of these five justices implied that race does not relate to opportunities in our contemporary society and thus the use of race-conscious policies--to achieve segregation or integration--is forbidden. In fact, according to Justice Clarence Thomas, any ongoing segregation in this country is the result of innocent private decisions and not inequality or discrimination. Student assignment policies, according to four members of the Court, must be colorblind. And yet, the Court's ruling was even more complicated. Five justices--the four dissenting justices plus one member of the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy--agreed that the two school districts did indeed have a compelling state interest in trying to achieve integration, in part because of the legacies of past discrimination. In other words, five justices concluded that the end--integration of public schools in order to overcome the history of inequality--was justified. But another five justices concluded that the most effective means for accomplishing that end, namely policies that pay attention to students' classifications and each school's demographics, were not. Justice Kennedy's swing opinion cited several alternative measures that Louisville, Seattle, and other districts could use to achieve the goal of integration, including locating new schools between racially distinct neighborhoods, redrawing school attendance zones, and targeting recruitment of students for particular schools. …

School Quality, House Prices and Liquidity

This paper develops an empirical framework for taking into account the effects of endogenous liquidity on price capitalization estimates. Changes in school attendance zones in the East Baton Rouge Parish public school district provide a natural experiment for studying how changes in school characteristics affect house prices and liquidity. House price and selling time, or liquidity, are simultaneously determined in search markets. The empirical model exploits variation in the surrounding neighborhood market conditions pertinent to each house to identify the system of price and liquidity equations. The estimates are consistent with search-market theory in that liquidity absorbs part of the capitalization of school quality.

The Effect of the Residential Mosaic and "White Flight" on Public School Composition: Evidence from Los Angeles County

This article examines the relationship between public school and neighborhood composition in Los Angeles County. In contrast to studies that examine the relationship between school and neighborhood composition at the school district level, our analysis focuses on the finer geographical unit of school attendance zones and finds that there is a strong correlation between the racial and ethnic composition of the school attendance zone and that of the school located in it. However, the analysis of the outliers suggests that private school attendance and open enrollment may increasingly lead to an uncoupling of the relationship between public school and neighborhood composition. This has important implications for school integration and suggests that even in a multiethnic city like Los Angeles "White flight" continues to be one strategy by which White families avoid contact between their children and racial or ethnic minorities.

The Third Little Rock Crisis

IN SEPTEMBER 1958, I was poised to enter my senior Hall High School in Little Rock. My sophomore of 1956-57 had been spent the famous Central High School. That was the before the Little Rock Nine were admitted to Central High and federal troops were deployed to enforce the Brown decisions.1 During the of the Little Rock Nine, which was the 1957-58 school year, I attended Hall, the new all-white high school in Little Rock. Hall had been built in the affluent part of the city. There were no black students enrolled that as there were in Central. This, in itself, was a significant bone of contention with some Central High parents. Nor were there white students enrolled the newly constructed all-black high school, Horace Mann. As I waited into the second week of September 1958 for the school to begin, it dawned on my parents that the three Little Rock high schools would not open that school year. On August 28, 1958, the Little Rock School Board had argued in favor of a two-and-a-half-year delay in implementing the Brown decisions before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Cooper v. Aaron. Judith Kilpatrick and Elizabeth Jacoway have discussed this case in more depth. Suffice it to say that the Supreme Court refused to delay desegregation in Little Rock and ordered it to proceed forthwith.2 Arkansas's governor, Orval Faubus, had called the General Assembly into special session to enact a package of legislation to thwart integration. One bill authorized the governor to close any school where integration had been ordered.3 After the court's decision in Cooper v. Aaron was announced, Faubus signed the act authorizing him to close public schools affected by integration, and he shut down the Little Rock high schools by proclamation on September 12, 1958. A special election of the voters of the Little Rock School District subsequently affirmed his actions. As a result, a generation of Little Rock students was put at sea, struggling to determine how and where we could pursue our secondary education. My class became known as the Lost Class of '59. It was not until the spring of 1959 that certain leaders of the Little Rock business community moved into high gear. Little Rock had received an international black eye because of the crisis, and business development and city growth were a standstill. These business leaders and a group of extraordinarily brave women known as the Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools worked diligently to reopen schools and correct the situation. They were successful in ousting segregationist members of the school board and retaining moderate school board members.4 The result was that the high schools reopened in August 1959, with both Hall and Central admitting black students. The crisis Central and the crisis of the lost year had passed. But were the crises over? In 1965, black parents of the Little Rock School District filed suit in federal district court contending that their children were being denied enrollment in white schools and relegated instead to black neighborhood schools.5 Since that time, the Clark litigation, as it has become known, has continued in various forms and consisted of federal court review of whether various plans put forth by the school district and other interested parties were constitutional. Those plans included student assignments based on geographic attendance zones, plans that alternated between busing students to schools in heavily white and heavily black neighborhoods depending on the grade, and plans for elementary schools that included four all-black schools in order to allow for better black/white ratios in the remaining schools. For the most part, these plans were approved by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit with certain modifications.6 In many respects, then, the first crisis of Little Rock continues to have a ripple effect on public education in my city as well as on the central Arkansas economy in general. …

Georeferencing School-Age Population Projections: Methodology for a Rapidly Growing District

Schools and other public service providers often require detailed information about local populations to accommodate geographically specific population growth and decline with necessary resources. Faced with relentless middle-class population growth, the Ascension Parish School District requires fine-grained population projections of its school enrollment to ensure sufficient facilities and balanced attendance zones in coming years. In this paper we outline the method we created to integrate standard projected population values with GIS to forecast any number of sub-parish population settlement geographies. With this approach, Ascension Parish School District is able to locate future school facilities and easily negotiate multiple possible attendance zone boundaries by systematically disaggregating and recombining standard population projections through GIS.

Student Diversity, Choice and School Improvement

Student Diversity, Choice and School Improvement. Charles V. Willie, Ralph Edwards, and Michael J. Alves. Wesport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 2002. pp. 174. $17.95 (paper). A number of recent research findings report that are becoming increasingly segregated by economic and racial status despite historical precedent of school desegregation. In time when America's are moving towards resegregation, Student Diversity, Choice and School Improvement is timely book that focuses on importance of diversifying schools. The authors present fresh look at how to promote equality and achievement in education and offer road map to reforming America's public schools. Willie, Edwards, and Alves's approach to make all schools of is grounded and practical. The authors emphasize that student diversity, choice, and school improvement are interconnected components for successful school reform. According to authors, at root of school reform is Controlled Choice-a comprehensive [approach that] prevents resegregation even when school districts experience substantial demographic changes (8). Further, a basic assumption [of Controlled Choice] is that every child and every child's group should have access to all educational opportunities that community offers, and that no child's group should be educationally disadvantaged because of personal or situational circumstances (21). Writing clearly and persuasively, authors challenge educational practices that provide simplistic solutions to complex issue of appropriating fair educational opportunity for all students to succeed. Drawing from authors' research studies, they share their experiences in working with school districts in several states (i.e., Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Washington) on creating equitable student assignment plans. In ensuing chapters, they provide an in-depth analysis on how two states implement Controlled Choice and resulting outcomes. As experts in this area their conclusions are valuable for examining and improving conditions of large numbers of high-poverty and low-achieving students and schools. The volume is organized into three sections with references at end of each chapter that well document their review of literature. Part One: Public School, Choice and Educational Outcomes In first section, authors provide an overview of school movement, describe several specific school plans, and assess problems associated with these plans. The synthesis is framed around topics discussed most often in choice literature: equity, access, parental choices, zoning, and diversity. To expand discourse of educational reform, Willie and colleagues offer comprehensive plan, namely Controlled Choice, that differs from other plans. They provide evidence on effectiveness of Controlled Choice and draw conclusions based on an analysis of their evidence. Also in this section, authors present past practices and contemporary strategies in designing student attendance zones. Two divergent examples worth mentioning are Lee County and Cambridge School Districts. To tackle rapid growth in its student population, Lee County School District implemented Controlled Choice by creating well-balanced student bodies of diverse student assignments. After implementing student assignment plans, there was an increase in student achievement in Lee County. Consequently, the Lee County experience...has important implications for other school districts in Florida and elsewhere that may wish to do so (45). The second example is Cambridge School District's adoption of Controlled Choice to promote student choice, student body diversity, and school improvement. However, as Willie and colleagues point out: Over years, student bodies in several Cambridge drifted into racial and socioeconomic imbalance (48). …

A ‘Communally Bonded’ School for African American Students, Families, and a Community

Not all urban schools that serve African American communities are the disasters portrayed in the media. Mr. Morris shares insights he has gleaned from a seven-year study of Elementary School in St. a school that has successfully with its community. THE CAMPUS grounds and the ambience of Elementary School, located in what is known as North St. Louis, differ vastly from the images of inner-city schooling presented regularly in news accounts.1 The shiny hardwood floors and the immaculate hallways defy the pervasive perceptions of urban and predominantly African American schools -- the types of conditions that are vividly depicted in Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities and Amy Stuart Wells and Robert Crain's Stepping over the Color Line.2 In contrast to the situations portrayed in Jean Anyon's account of urban schools in Ghetto Schooling, the mostly African American educators at have not given up on the the system, and, most important, the children.3 Since 1994 I have been engaged in an extensive study of Elementary School. is not a perfect school. As in many urban schools that enroll primarily low-income students, the educators contend daily with external factors that affect what goes on inside the school. However, Farragut is a good school, as a parent notes. In this article, I will show how school personnel have communally bonded with African American families and the surrounding community to foster an academically supportive environment for the predominantly African American and low-income student population.4 I will then discuss how my investigation into Elementary School extends to the broader issues of urban education, academic excellence, parent and community involvement, and the color line in the 21st century. Building on the Past Elementary School creates a sense of pride for African American people in the nearby community, much like the pride that many formerly all-black schools once represented for black people.5 boasts a strong academic reputation, which also was present in some of the segregated, all-black schools that we (academics, educators, and policy makers) know too little about. Although parents from the attendance zone near the school have the option of sending their children to magnet or predominantly white county schools as part of a voluntary desegregation plan, very few parents from the community have exercised that option. Instead, they have chosen and are satisfied with the quality of education their children receive in the school.6 Students at also have one of the highest attendance rates in the city and consistently outperform students at other schools in the St. Louis public schools -- including magnet schools -- on traditional measures such as standardized tests.7 Is Elementary School an anomaly? And how does the communal bonding between the school and the community contribute to the rich and rewarding educational experience for African American students? Initially, I attempted to use existing school/family partnership models to describe what I observed at Elementary School, but this school did not fit those models. I talked with friends and shared findings with colleagues but stumbled when attempting to describe the nature of the bonding between the African American families, and the nearby community. Then I realized that the difficulty might have stemmed from the way school and family connections are traditionally viewed in the academic and educational communities. The larger society is not aware of the historical context in which functions. In the midst of pervasive societal racism and discriminatory practices -- which resulted in separate and grossly unequal facilities -- many segregated, all-black schools served as stabilizing institutions for African American communities, and those communities shared in the ownership of the local black schools. …

Reduced emergency department utilization associated with school-based clinic enrollment.

To evaluate the change in emergency department utilization before and after enrollment in a school-based clinic (SBC). This study was a retrospective cohort study comparing emergency department visit rate before and after SBC enrollment based on chart review. An initial cohort of 10- to 15-year-olds who used a local emergency department was divided into two samples: those who had been enrolled in the SBC and those who had not. Emergency department charts were reviewed for visits that occurred during the initial year and two subsequent school years. The change in visit rate for each sample group was measured for each school year evaluated. The initial cohort consisted of 2852 youth, 344 of whom who lived in the high school attendance zone. Of these, the number of students enrolled in both the high school and the SBC was 43; the number enrolled in the high school but not in the clinic was 48. The emergency department visit rate decreased for both groups for each school year evaluated; however, this decrease was significant only for the SBC sample with a 41% to 57% decrease in emergency department utilization, 18% greater than the decrease in students who did not use the SBC. Accessible, prevention-oriented health care provided in a SBC can decrease the utilization of episodic health care in an emergency department.

Desegregation and the Historically Black High School: The Establishment of Howard W. Blake in Tampa, Florida.

This article examines a grassroots movement among African-Americans to reestablish Howard W. Blake High School, named for a historically black high school closed during the desegregation process in Tampa, Florida. The establishment of Blake High School was contentious, involving negotiations by multiple and conflicting interests—school officials, black leaders, alumni of the historically black high schools that had existed prior to desegregation, the federal judge overseeing the 1971 desegregation order, and civil rights leaders. Analyzing the debates over Blake's status as a magnet, its location, and its attendance zone, this article highlights the paradox of desegregation for African-American communities in Tampa. This case reveals the tension between the desire for community schooling and the consequences of resegregation.

Readings on Equal Education, Volume 13: Forty Years after the Brown Decision-Implications of School Desegregation for U.S. Education

Readings on Equal Volume 13: Forty Years After the Brown Decision-Implications of School Desegregation for LI.S. edited by Kofi Lomotey and Charles Teddlie. New York: AMS Press, 1996. 226 pp. $62.50, cloth. readings in this volume provide an overview of the progress made toward desegregation since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. They are significant in that they include implications of desegregation for U.S. education generally as well as its impact on historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). themes running throughout are the problems of desegregation and the relationship between race, poverty, educational outcomes, and housing patterns. editors' intent was to present reviews of interest to persons familiar with the progress made since Brown, but the readings' strong historical focus also makes them useful as a knowledge base for those unfamiliar with this aspect of U.S. educational history. volume is divided into two sections, each of which begins with an informative overview bv co-editors Teddlie and Lomotey, both of whom are professors of education at Louisiana State University with extensive editorial experience. Section I, The General Implications of Desegregation for U.S. Education, begins with an introductory chapter by the co-editors that provides an overview of historical perspectives on school desegregation. In chapter 2, Teddlie and co-author John Freeman divide the content into five periods as they explore the relationship between the Brown decision and higher education. They focus on the NAACP's struggle to end school segregation, White resistance to desegregation, and legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Higher Education Act of 1965. Teddlie and Freeman also examine the concept of reverse discrimination, the growth in African American enrollment in colleges and universities during the 1980s and 1990s, and ongoing higher education desegregation cases in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. remainder of Section I deals primarily with desegregation cases at the elementary and secondary levels. In chapter 3, author Jacqulin Sensley Jacobs examines the position taken by the courts over the four decades since Brown, stating that courts initially issued strong desegregation mandates which subsequently were not enforced. She discusses methods of achieving desegregation such as attendance zones and busing, and notes that, by the 1980s and 1990s, freedom-of-choice programs rejected by earlier courts had become acceptable through the advent of magnet schools. Jacobs also asserts that, beginning in the 1990s, courts have acted more as referee, and local school districts have had more authority to establish desegregation plans. Chapter 4 author Janet Ward Schofield reviews research on the impact of desegregation on elementary and secondary students, focusing primarily on academic achievement and the relations between students from different ethnic and racial groups. She states that there is some evidence to suggest that desegregation may help break the cycle of generational and racial isolation, but that evidence regarding its impact on intergroup relations is inconclusive and inconsistent. Schofield argues that desegregation efforts should focus on improving educational opportunities rather than changing the racial composition of schools. In chapter 5, Continuing the Struggle for Desegregated Schools, authors Susan E. Eaton and Gary A. Orfield state that, even as the Brown decision is reaffirmed as a great moral victory, racial segregation remains a fact of everyday educational life. They examine in detail the Sheff v. O'Neill (1996) case, in which the plaintiffs charged that the concentrated poverty and segregation in Hartford, Connecticut schools deprived students of the equal education guaranteed by the state constitution. court denied their request for a metropolitan desegregation plan; and plaintiffs subsequently appealed to the state Supreme Court. …

Opportunities For Learning: Course Sequences and Positional Advantages

Course sequences are strands of courses in particular content areas that span a student's educational career. Courses that are differentiated and sequentially organized, such as mathematics and science course sequences, create opportunities for positional advantages in a school's curricular structure. When students make a nonroutine change of schools – that is, transferring to a school outside of the regular attendance zone – they are at risk of changing their positional advantage. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988–94 (NELS:88–94), we examine the educational outcomes of sequences and explore curricular dislocations within the context of school choice. We find that the strongest predictors of 12th-grade mathematics and science course sequences are a student's course sequences at 10th grade. With regard to outcomes, students in higher mathematics and science sequences show greater achievement gains. Furthermore, students in higher mathematics sequences are less likely to have behavior problems and are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college. Students who make a nonroutine change of schools are more likely to be in lower course sequences than students who do not transfer. Thus, course sequences in mathematics and science are tangible experiences with real consequences for students' lives during and beyond high school and are sensitive to transitions which disrupt the continuity of students' high school careers.

Peer and Community Leader Education to Prevent Youth Violence

The program described here tests the effectiveness of a community-based and school-based program to reduce violence among African-American and Hispanic adolescents. The program methods are based on social network theory research, which has found that key lay people in communities can be identified and trained to carry out prevention programs. The educational content is based on theories suggesting that characteristics of healthy, adaptive individuals and communities can be taught. A violence-prevention leadership program is provided to a cohort of middle-school student peer leaders and their parents and for the leaders of the neighborhoods around the middle schools. Three matched pairs of urban middle-school attendance zones were randomly assigned to receive either the intervention or serve as a nonintervention control group. Surveys, interviews, and observations were conducted with the peer leaders, their parents, community leaders, and community residents. Sixty-six percent of the peer leaders reported that they had hit someone in the past 30 days. Twenty-six percent of the sixth-graders had punched or beaten someone in the past 30 days. Within the past year, 6% of the adults had slapped or kicked someone. Within the past 30 days, 14% of the sixth-graders had been punched or beaten. Within the past year, 6% of the adults had been punched or beaten. A large percentage of adolescents are victims and perpetrators of violence and are exposed to violence in their neighborhoods. Violence-prevention strategies can be implemented through collaborations among health departments, community-based organizations, universities, and schools.

Bicycle-Helmet Use Evaluation Using Comparison-Site Observation

The Texas Transportation Institute (TT1) conducted observational surveys of bicycle-helmet use in six cities. Three of the cities (Austin, Houston, and San Antonio) were targeted by a Texas Office of Disabilities and Prevention program to increase bicycle-helmet use among 5 to 14 year-olds. Three control cities (Fort Worth, Dallas, and El Paso) were selected. Target-city and control-city observation zones were designated using census data for school attendance zones merged with county geographic files. School attendance zones in target and control cities were matched for ethnicity and socioeconomic characteristics. Observations were conducted in succession from July through September 1994. Helmet use data was collected through mobile surveillance. Observations in school areas were made in at least two socioeconomi-cally diverse neighborhoods whenever such neighborhoods existed in an attendance zone. Observers canvassed each observation zone, traveling by car on as many public roads as possible during each...

Bicycle-Helmet Use Evaluation Using Comparison-Site Observation

The Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) conducted observational surveys of bicycle-helmet use in six cities. Three of the cities (Austin, Houston, and San Antonio) were targeted by a Texas Office of Disabilities and Prevention program to increase bicycle-helmet use among 5 to 14 year-olds. Three control cities (Fort Worth, Dallas, and El Paso) were selected. Target-city and control-city observation zones were designated using census data for school attendance zones merged with county geographic files. School attendance zones in target and control cities were matched for ethnicity and socioeconomic characteristics. Observations were conducted in succession from July through September 1994. Helmet use data was collected through mobile surveillance. Observations in school areas were made in at least two socioeconomi-cally diverse neighborhoods whenever such neighborhoods existed in an attendance zone. Observers canvassed each observation zone, traveling by car on as many public roads as possible during each observation period. Overall, 1,485 bicyclists were observed in the six study areas. In each study area the number of bicyclists observed was between 200 and 350. Helmet use ranged from 3 percent overall in San Antonio to 22 percent overall in Austin; however, a great deal of variation was observed within each city. TTI plans to monitor program effects at the observation zones with two additional survey waves. Legislation mandating helmet use in Texas was introduced in 1994, but failed. Program efforts to be undertaken by the Texas Injury Control and Prevention office are planned for 1995 and 1996.

都市部における自由通学制の通学範囲について(小・中学校の場合) : 教育施設の配置と学区計画に関する研究・そのIII

This report discusses the aims, establishment and regulation of school-attendance zones under the open enrollment system, and describes the limitation of attendance zones on the basis of actual situations. The issue of safety along school commuting routes is also examined. The following findings are reported on school-attendance zones under the open enrollment system for public elementary schools and junior high schools, particularly in urban communities.