1. Introduction and Overview. 2. Detecting Influential Observations and Outliers. 3. Detecting and Assessing Collinearity. 4. Applications and Remedies. 5. Research Issues and Directions for Extensions. Bibliography. Author Index. Subject Index.

Regression Diagnostics: Identifying Influential Data and Sources of Collinearity

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

The National Academy of Sciences founded The National Academies Press (NAP) with the goal of publishing reports of all four national academies. Annually, NAP publishes more than 200 books from the fields of science, engineering and medicine and offers more than 4000 titles in PDF on its website (http://www.nap.edu/) free of charge.

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The National Academies Press

The book Inequality by Christopher Jencks is in one sense an arid waste of somewhat confusing and misleading statistics between chapter one and chapter nine, and, in another sense, a destructive, unscientific critique of American education and families. Jencks' interpretation comes down hard on his basic feeling that "The crucial problem today is that relatively few people view income inequality as a serious problem; indeed the Nixon administration apparently convinced itself that income was too equally distributed in 1968 and that the rich needed additional incentives to get even richer . The Kennedy and Johnson administrations were only marginally better. Neither made any explicit effort to equalize incomes; the subject was hardly discussed. Instead reformers focused on equalizing opportunity." This view is probably correct but it is no excuse for an unscholarly, unscientific polemic against far from "peripheral institutions," which is Jencks' evaluation of the American schools. This book states

Inequality, A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America.

In this article, Jennifer Jellison Holme explores how parents who can afford to buy homes in areas known “for the schools” approach school choice in an effort to illuminate how the “unofficial” choice market works. Using qualitative methods, Holme finds that the beliefs that inform the choices of such parents are mediated by status ideologies that emphasize race and class. She concludes that school choice policies alone will not level the playing field for lower-status parents, as choice advocates often suggest. Suzanne Holland and I were scheduled to meet on a warm summer morning at a Starbucks coffee shop located in a shopping center near her suburban home. 1 I arrived early, and waited at a patio table shaded by a large green umbrella before Suzanne, a tall blond White woman in her early forties, pulled up in her sport utility vehicle. I introduced myself, and after we got our coffees we sat down to talk about why Suzanne had moved to the community of Rancho Vista, and what role schools had played in that decision. Before she and her husband moved to Rancho Vista, Suzanne informed me, they had lived for many years in a large home in a predominately White, upper-middle-class neighborhood. This neighborhood, however, was located within a large urban school district that had, according to Suzanne’s friends and acquaintances, low-quality public schools. In fact, these schools were considered of such poor quality that almost everyone Suzanne knew either sent their children to private schools or simply moved out of the area to one considered to be in a better school district. As the eldest of their three chil

Buying Homes, Buying Schools: School Choice and the Social Construction of School Quality.

Little is known about the influence of school choice programs on race and economic segregation in public schools. Studies of housing segregation suggest that small differences in the preferences of particular race or socioeconomic groups have the potential to produce large-scale patterns of segregation. In this study, I raise three questions regarding the link between individual choice and educational segregation: first, are the school choices of higher status families driven by a desire to avoid schools populated by students they consider to be of lower race or class status? Second, can other school features, such as safety, appearance, and educational quality, explain apparent raceor class-based choices? Third, can families' choices of schools be linked directly with segregation patterns independent of school district policies that may interfere with (or galvanize) the ability of people to exercise their choices? To answer these questions, I analyze magnet school application data from a large city to explore the choices of families for schools that vary in racial and economic composition. Findings show that white families avoid schools with higher percentages of non-white students. The tendency of white families to avoid schools with higher percentages of non-whites cannot be accounted for by other school characteristics such as test scores, safety, or poverty rates. I also find that wealthier families avoid schools with higher poverty rates. The choices of white and wealthier students lead to increased racial and economic segregation in the neighborhood schools that these students leave. Moreover, the link between choice and segregation cannot be explained by school district policies. Findings suggest that laissez faire school choice policies, which allow the unfettered movement of children in and out of schools, may further deteriorate the educational conditions for disadvantaged students left behind in local public schools.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/sp.2003.50.2.181

Private Choices, Public Consequences: Magnet School Choice and Segregation by Race and Poverty

This paper examines how families make choices within the context of a school choice program. School choice proponents suggest that increasing choices for disadvantaged children will have many benefits, including decreasing racial segregation in urban areas. This argument has not been supported with empirical data. In this paper, we use quantitative and interview data from an entire population of eighth graders in a large northeastern school district to examine the influence of race on the schools families select. We find compelling evidence that race is a very powerful force in guiding family choices. Specifically, white families assiduously avoid schools with higher percentages of African American students. After eliminating “black” schools from consideration, white families choose “white” schools, many of which have inferior safety records, test scores, and higher rates of poverty. In contrast, African American families do not show a similar sensitivity to race; instead they tend to select schools with lower poverty rates. These findings have a number of implications for theory and policy. In terms of policy, choice advocates argue that voucher programs will give poor, African American children the same alternatives currently available to more affluent, white families. This should make choice programs compatible with the goal of racial integration. However, our evidence suggests that the marked preference of white families to avoid “black” schools could exacerbate, rather than reduce, racial segregation. These findings also have conceptual implications. Decision-making is a socially charged activity; choices are not made merely on the basis of individual taste. Rather, preferences are shaped by social factors, including one's racial background. White and African American families make distinctly different school choices. Indeed, white families eliminate from consideration schools in which 90 percent or more of the children are African American. The further theoretical implication is that choices unfold in a multi-staged process in which some alternatives are eliminated from serious consideration based upon socially salient characteristics. This has the power to inform the choice process in the social settings of housing, hiring practices, and similar areas of social life.

School Selection as a Process: The Multiple Dimensions of Race in Framing Educational Choice

Scholars have debated whether students' enrollment in private schools changes levels of racial segregation across urban school districts. The authors examine this issue by comparing the actual raci...

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Coloring outside the Lines: Racial Segregation in Public Schools and Their Attendance Boundaries

We examine high concentrations of poverty in public schools by comparing economic segregation in schools and in their corresponding attendance boundaries. To do this, we assign poverty rates from the 2000 census to maps of school attendance boundaries for 21 of the largest school districts and link this with data enumerating the number of poor children enrolled in each school. Results show that percentages of poor children in neighborhood schools is greater than in their corresponding catchment areas and this difference is greater when the majority of children living in a neighborhood are racial minorities. These patterns reflect the withdrawal of wealthier children from public schools and into private, charter and magnet schools. The result is that poor and minority children are much more concentrated in high-poverty public schools than they would be if all children attended their local schools.

Mapping Educational Inequality: Concentrations of Poverty among Poor and Minority Students in Public Schools.

We examine whether student enrollment in nonneighborhood schools changes levels of racial segregation in public schools across urban school districts by comparing the racial composition of schools and their corresponding attendance area. This comparison was made possible by using geographic information systems (GIS) to link maps of elementary, middle, and high school attendance boundaries with 2000 census data, the Common Core of Data, and the Private School Survey for the 22 largest school districts. Results show that public schools would be less racially segregated if all children living in a school district attended their local, neighborhood schools. Similarly, findings reveal that private, magnet, and charter schools contribute to overall racial segregation within most school districts. Finally, while segregation levels in school catchment areas become lower from elementary to middle to high schools, the difference in segregation between catchment areas and the schools that serve them remains constant...

/pdf/mapping-school-segregation-using-gis-to-explore-racial-58zd3rgtuu.pdf

Salvatore Saporito

Papers

Private Choices, Public Consequences: Magnet School Choice and Segregation by Race and Poverty

School Selection as a Process: The Multiple Dimensions of Race in Framing Educational Choice

Coloring outside the Lines: Racial Segregation in Public Schools and Their Attendance Boundaries

Mapping Educational Inequality: Concentrations of Poverty among Poor and Minority Students in Public Schools.

Mapping School Segregation: Using GIS to Explore Racial Segregation between Schools and Their Corresponding Attendance Areas