This dynamic underlies D.C.'s geographic divides in
public school enrollment patterns: options offered by DCPS and public charter schools are least important for families who live in the Wilson HS area, [2] and extremely important everywhere else in the city.
Even with this added dimension, the researchers were unable to identify tangible county characteristics that explain why slave concentration from 1860 is related to
contemporary school enrollment patterns.
The D.C. Advisory Committee on Student Assignment has the opportunity to
shape school enrollment patterns in the city in this pivotal time of demographic change.
Three interrelated pieces of information
characterize school enrollment patterns, and I document changes over time in all three: the degree of interaction, as measured by black student exposure to white students; dissimilarity indexes for schools and districts; and overall demographic composition.
Living within the feeder pattern for Wilson HS outweighs all neighborhood aspects in explaining the differences in boundary participation rates across neighborhoods, but certain neighborhood demographics are also associated
with school enrollment patterns.
Although racial / ethnic differences in private school enrollment are largely explained by income differences, the urban / suburban and regional differences in
private school enrollment patterns are large even among families with similar incomes.
Existing research has examined the role that school quality plays in families» school choices, but because boundary participation rates diverge based on location, it is possible that
school enrollment patterns are related to neighborhood characteristics.
The importance of most neighborhood characteristics for
school enrollment patterns is greatest for elementary schools and disappears in middle and high school grades (including access to transit).
The dataset combines data from local sources with U.S. Census Bureau data to assemble a profile of neighborhood characteristics and
school enrollment patterns for 109 school boundaries.
What can high
school enrollment patterns and comparisons of D.C.'s trends to similar cities tell us about past progress and potential future performance?