Why did Quinn and Vera have such different days at school?
Although Vera and Quinn are fictional characters, their different experiences at school are based on the
statistical differences in neighboring schools across the United States.
The invisible line that separates Quinn and Vera is called a “school administrative boundary”. These
boundaries designate which parts of a neighborhood are assigned to attend certain school. So, even though
Quinn and Vera are in the same school district, they attend schools with different educational
opportunities. These opportunities can either help set these students up for success or give them more
hurdles to overcome, and this inequity can have lasting ramifications on higher education and factors like
expected earning later in life.
A study by the Urban Institute in 2021, investigates these school administrative boundaries more closely.
They found that often these boundaries are not arbitrary, as many may assume, but in fact often divide up
neighborhoods based on their racial makeup.
Not all school zones segregate children, but many do.
Some of the boundaries are more unequal than others and
some are carefully drawn to designate the areas with a higher population of Black and Hispanic students to
one school, and the area with a higher population of White students to another school.
Diving deeper reveals that these boundaries can, and often do, reinforce racist “Redlining” policies that
trace back to the 1930’s.
Researchers at the Urban Institute calculated the overlapping land area of these
redlining areas with current school neighborhood assignments. This data reveals that many school
neighborhoods that are now assigned to communities with more Black and Hispanic students tended to overlap
with land that was once categorized as “Declining” or “Hazardous”. Meanwhile, nearby schools who now have a
higher share of white students, tend to overlap with land areas that were once categorized as “Best” or
“Desirable”.
The racist policies of the 1930’s are mirrored in today’s school neighborhoods.
As we saw with Quinn and Vera, a student’s school assignment can affect the quality of school they are
assigned to. Some schools have better teachers, more staff, and more opportunities for students to be
enrolled in gifted programs or advanced track courses.
These higher quality schools are disproportionately allotted to predominantly White communities. While nearby
schools with newer and less trained teachers, fewer staff, and fewer advanced classes are more often
allotted to areas with a higher share of Black and Hispanic students.
Schools with a higher share of White students perform, on average, 142% better on standardized tests than
their neighboring schools. Given the stark differences in quality of teachers and staff, and the increased
disciplining of Black and Hispanic students, it's not surprising that they aren't excelling at state exams.
Segregated schools exist across the United States. As part of their study, the Urban Institute labeled some
boundaries between schools as "unequal". Broadly this criteria meant that the specific pair of schools had
one side with a 25% higher share of Black or Hispanic students enrolled at the school, near the boundary, or
within the neighborhood boundary. The full dataset from the Urban Institute had over 140,000 pairs of
schools. Almost 2,500 of those had "unequal" boundaries, spanning across more than 600 school districts.
It's important to note, that just because a state has fewer "unequal" boundaries does not mean that it's
providing better opportunities for Black and Hispanic students. In some regions this low number is due to
low racial diversity overall.
Almost 100 years after "Redlining" policies were put in place, their repercussions are still evident across
society and affect everything from home loans to air quality. And while it's important to dismantle all of
those systems in favor of more equitable ones, it's hard to know where to start. Although school
administrative boundaries may seem fixed, that's not the case. Many come up for
review on an almost yearly basic. Communities have the opportunity to de-segregate their school
zones and provide more equitable access to students of all races.