https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0341-444X
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ABSTRACT
Sixty-five years after the Brown v. Board decision, American schools are re-segregated and re-segregating. The mechanisms of this re-segregation are legal action, voluntary moves towards unitary status, unintended consequences of integration-oriented strategies, and an increasing trend towards the fracturing, or splintering of school districts. Both economic and political theory would indicate that splintering districts would work to pull racial and economic advantage out of the remaining district and into their own. To test this theory, we created a dataset that captures the fiscal and demographic status of U.S. school districts between 2000 and 2014 and analyzed the effect of district separation on the remaining districts in terms of student body composition, overall integration and local, state, and federal resources. Our findings indicate that separating districts are less diverse than the districts left behind. We further find that separating districts gain resources from local revenue and that remaining districts gain federal revenue in insufficient amounts to account for the loss of local funds. We find that these relative disadvantages for left behind districts and relative advantages for seceding districts persist when compared to the general population of school districts.
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Notes on contributors
Eric A. Houck
Eric A. Houck is Associate Professor of Leadership and Policy in the School of Education at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he coordinates the Ed.D. program in educational leadership. He studies education finance. 121C Peabody Hall, CB#3500, UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599.
Brittany C. Murray
Brittany C. Murray is a doctoral candidate in the Ph.D. program in policy, leadership, and school improvement at UNC-Chapel Hill.