Friday, February 02, 2018

Segregating America's Schools


Schools in the southern states of America are as segregated now as they were 50 years ago. It isn't just the southern states where schools are segregated along racial lines. Because of the residential segregation that exists in nearly every community in America the majority of black children end up attending schools where the majority of students are black and white children attend schools where the majority of students are white.

In We can draw school zones to make classrooms less segregated Vox looks at how school districts can be gerrymandered to make them less segregated. The article includes a map tool which allows you to visualize how segregated schools currently are in your town. If you enter your school district into this tool you can view a choropleth map showing the percentage of students in each elementary school zone who were black or Hispanic in the 2013 school year.

The map allows you to view how the situation is in your district using the current zoning regulations with how it would look if students were just assigned to their nearest school. Beneath the map you can see a graph which reveals if your local zoning regulations are lessening school segregation or making segregation worse.

No comments: