The Productive Nature of Attendance Boundaries: How They Are Determined and Why They Matter
| dc.contributor.advisor | Mazzei, Lisa | |
| dc.contributor.author | Fitch , Katherine | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-09-13T18:34:18Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2021-09-13T18:34:18Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2021-09-13 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Public school attendance boundaries across the United States produce inequitable school environments in urban and suburban districts. Traditionally, suburban school districts have been understudied but are increasingly a site of research interest because of their rapid growth and significant changes in racial and economic demographics. Therefore, I explore the change in suburban school attendance boundaries in the Lodge City School District (LCSD). The LCSD boundary changes coincided with rapid district growth and profound demographic changes. In studying LCSD, I identify the practices used to determine the new high school attendance boundaries. I explore what these boundary practices produced, how they mattered, and whether these practices disrupted or cemented inequities within the district. To do this, I drew on the literature from three areas of education research: diversifying suburban districts, school boundary changes, and the use of spatial analysis in education research. Within these bodies of literature, I identified a lack of theorization of space, race, and class and how they’re in a dynamic relationship with changing school boundaries and changing suburban demographics. I fulfill this gap through a unique theoretical framework based on Barad’s (2007) philosophy of agential realism, foundations of critical geography, and Molina et al.’s (2019) relational formations of race. Emerging from my theoretical framework, I analyzed my data (meeting minutes, publicly posted parent comments, boundary advisory committee interviews, and district demographic data) using Barad’s concept of the apparatus in conversation with spatial analysis via geographic information systems. I traced two unique apparatuses: the objectives and criteria for the boundary change and Highway 44, which cuts through LCSD. Through the analysis, I determined that the articulation of objectives and criteria and the need to foreground the geographic reality of the district are crucial practices when determining new attendance boundaries. These practices matter because they constrain and define what is interior to the decision-making process and what boundary configurations are possible or impossible. By being intentional in determining the objectives for the boundary process and centering a district's geography, a district can work to disrupt inequities, but if districts ignore these practices, they will further cement longstanding district inequities. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26615 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | |
| dc.rights | All Rights Reserved. | |
| dc.subject | attendance boundaries | en_US |
| dc.subject | Barad | en_US |
| dc.subject | critical geography | en_US |
| dc.subject | education policy | en_US |
| dc.subject | GIS | en_US |
| dc.subject | relational formations of race | en_US |
| dc.title | The Productive Nature of Attendance Boundaries: How They Are Determined and Why They Matter | |
| dc.type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Department of Education Studies | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Oregon | |
| thesis.degree.level | doctoral | |
| thesis.degree.name | Ph.D. |
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