ERIC Number: EJ1200638
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0161-956X
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Available Date: N/A
"Quality, Close to Home" and Invisible Zero-Sum Politics: Boston's Home-Based Student Assignment Policy
McDermott, Kathryn A.; Fung-Morley, Anna
Peabody Journal of Education, v93 n4 p395-410 2018
In 2013, the Boston Public Schools (BPS) adopted the Home-Based Student Assignment Policy (HBSAP), which replaced elementary and middle-school choice within three large geographic zones with an algorithm that generates a choice basket of schools for each address based on proximity to the student's home and a guarantee that all baskets will include at least four schools in the top two state test-score quartiles of BPS. Adoption of HBSAP broke a long political stalemate. BPS invited broad public participation in the process but also shaped the agenda to favor what middle-class neighborhood participants wanted. The process obscured the zero-sum politics of student assignment by permitting current students and their younger siblings to continue in their schools after adoption of HBSAP and because the algorithm does not produce winners and losers as obviously as geographically defined student assignment policies do. BPS has not produced a comprehensive evaluation of HBSAP's effects, but early evidence suggests that it is making enclave schools more white.
Descriptors: Public Schools, Educational Policy, School Choice, Proximity, Student Placement, School Location, Neighborhood Schools, Educational Change, Public Opinion, Public Support, Mathematics, Enrollment, Racial Composition, Access to Education, Racial Differences, Politics of Education, Urban Areas, Middle Class, School Desegregation, School Resegregation
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Massachusetts (Boston)
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