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Achieving Diversity In The Parents Involved Era: Evidence For Geographic Integration Plans In Metropolitan School Districts, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Meredith Richard, Kori Stroub, Michael Volonnino

Julian Vasquez Heilig

In the wake of the Parents Involved decision, which rendered unconstitutional voluntary school integration plans using individual student race, districts have adopted a number of alternative integration strategies to combat the re-segregation of America’s schools. One promising approach, developed by Berkeley Unified School District, uses neighborhood demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as proxies for student race and ethnicity in assigning students to schools. This study provides the first empirical assessment of such “geographic integration models” by 1) modeling how accurately neighborhood demographic and socioeconomic characteristics predicted student race/ethnicity, and 2) estimating the potential increases in school diversity under such a plan. …