Work in Progress

Most school districts in the United States use attendance boundaries to delineate access to public schools. We use newly available data on the complete set of boundaries from 5000 school districts over 2011 to 2021 to show that these boundaries change frequently in what we call redistricting events, with important consequences for students and homeowners. Using a matched pair design, we profile the nature of each redistricting event in terms of its impacts on diversity, proximity, capacity, and choice in the district. We then estimate the average and profile-specific effects of redistricting on student outcomes and home values. The final step of the analysis employs a double-matching approach to investigate the redistricting effect on different communities within districts.