Data access and the study of educational equity: Implications from a national school boundary data collection effort

School attendance zone boundary (AZB) data remain relatively underdocumented and understudied within the field of education, despite their critical implications for educational (in)equity. AZBs shape student outcomes and residential sorting patterns both by determining the public schools a student is assigned to and by signaling neighborhood characteristics to prospective homebuyers. The limited access, regulation, and review of AZB data to date has left a gap in the knowledge base, having the potential to leave intact (and exacerbate) patterns of segregation that maintain inequities in educational opportunity. Lack of data also limits our ability to know whether and when AZBs may mitigate segregation. In this brief, we examine a novel data collection effort of current and historical AZB data—the Longitudinal School Attendance Boundary System—to explore the contextual and political factors associated with data access and data quality.We aim to show how factors that hinder access to quality AZB data affect the study of educational equity, and we advocate formore comprehensive, top–down governmental efforts to create, maintain, and collect these data.

This is the author’s final version, the article has been accepted for publication in [journal title]

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Work Title Data access and the study of educational equity: Implications from a national school boundary data collection effort
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. Sarah Asson
  2. Erica Frankenberg
  3. Annie Maselli
  4. Ian Burfoot-Rochford
  5. Christopher Fowler
  6. Ruth Krebs Buck
License In Copyright (Rights Reserved)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Education Finance and Policy
Publication Date July 17, 2023
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00388
Deposited July 01, 2024

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Version 1
published

  • Created
  • Added Data_access_final_submission.pdf
  • Added Creator Sarah Asson
  • Added Creator Annie Maselli
  • Added Creator Erica Frankenberg
  • Added Creator Annie Maselli
  • Added Creator Ian Burfoot-Rochford
  • Added Creator E Frankenberg
  • Added Creator Ian Burfoot-Rochford
  • Added Creator Christopher Fowler
  • Added Creator Ruth Krebs Buck
  • Published
  • Updated
  • Deleted Creator Annie Maselli
  • Deleted Creator E Frankenberg
  • Deleted Creator Ian Burfoot-Rochford
  • Updated Creator Annie Maselli
  • Updated Creator Erica Frankenberg
  • Updated Creator Ian Burfoot-Rochford
  • Updated Creator Christopher Fowler
  • Updated Creator Ruth Krebs Buck
  • Updated Publication Date Show Changes
    Publication Date
    • 2022-01-01
    • 2023-07-17