Stacy Braverman and Priya Baskaran
UP 504

Language Immersion Schools’ Impact on Neighborhood Demographics

Introduction
As schools and neighborhoods remain highly segregated along racial and economic lines, solutions that allow neighborhoods to become more balanced are extremely desirable to many cities.  We decided to study areas in which language immersion schools are located, to determine whether the programs are actually associated with the demographic changes they aim to accomplish. 

Research Question and Hypothesis

Research Question: Do neighborhoods with language immersion schools see greater changes in their racial and economic diversity than the city in which they are located does?

Hypothesis: Areas with immersion schools will become more racially and economically diverse over the time period, and that the magnitude of this change would outpace any increase in the diversity of the city as a whole.  Diversity would increase more in neighborhoods that were predominantly lower-income or non-white at the beginning of the time period.

Data Collection
We focused on the 50 American cities with the largest populations in 2000, and examined the time period from 2000-2007.  We used the Center for Applied Linguistics’ directories of single-language and dual-language immersion schools to compile a list of public school immersion programs in those cities.  Ultimately, the list comprised 134 schools in 36 cities.  We then used Internet searches to determine in which ZIP code each school was located.  Unlike Census tracts or other geographic areas, it was easy to find each school’s ZIP code, and data at this level was easily accessible.  We used the Demographics Now database, which compiles Census and Claritas data for our demographic information.  The following variables were collected for 2000 and 2007 in each of the 113 ZIP codes (multiple schools were located in some ZIP codes):

• Percentage of population aged 5-14
• Percentage Asian
• Percentage Black/African-American
• Percentage White
• Percentage Hispanic (could be of any race)
• Percentage of households with annual income under $35,000
• Percentage of households with annual income above $100,000
• Per capita income

We collected the same data for each of the 36 cities with at least one immersion school, and for the United States as a whole. 

Change in Percentage of Per Capita Income (PCI)

Change in Percentage of Kids (aged 5-14)

Change in Percentage of Whites

Change in Percentage of Whites