Collaborative Research: School Attendance Boundary Information System (SABINS)

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Collaborative ProposalSES-0921794Savatore J. SaporitoCollege of William and MarySES-0921279John R. WarrenUniversity of Minnesota"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(Public Law 111-5)."Although geography is an organizing feature of K to 12 education, the U.S. lacks an integrated database that describes student populations living in school attendance boundaries. The lack of a spatial database of school attendance boundaries has hindered the ability of researchers to undertake large-scale studies that explore phenomena such as the impact of school quality on housing prices, school socioeconomic composition on educational outcomes, or levels of racial and economic segregation in school catchment areas. To improve the quality and accessibility of geographic and demographic data, this project will assemble and distribute a new spatial database called the School Attendance Boundary Information System (SABINS). The data will consist of school attendance boundaries for 800 of the largest school districts in the country. These school districts contain at least half of the school-aged population in the U.S. Each school attendance boundary in the SABINS database will be integrated with data from the 2010 decennial census, the American Community Survey, and the U.S. Department of Education's Common Core of Data. Linking demographic data with school catchment areas will allow users to determine the characteristics of student-aged populations living in thousands of school zones. SABINS data will be distributed via the National Historic GIS web site (http://www.nhgis.org/), allowing researchers and educational administrators to create customized datasets consisting of statistical information of their choosing. The SABINS Data Project will benefit society by improving scientific understanding of educational inequality and by allowing local, state, and federal administrators to deliver educational services more efficiently.