The Shape of Educational Equity

This chapter provides an overview of the benefits of utilizing geographic information systems (GIS) to explore the intersections of school choice policy, educational equity, space, and race. The author discusses the theory of racial space, a framework for understanding the complex interactions between spatial processes and race. Additionally, the author offers an overview of GIS functionality and discusses research that incorporates GIS as a tool to examine the role of charter schools in shaping educational opportunities and outcomes across neighborhoods, cities, and states. Finally, this chapter will introduce emerging research areas and interdisciplinary research approaches, including advanced geospatial techniques, used to examine the intersections of geography and educational equity.

How Much of Electoral Politics Is in the District? Measuring District Effects on Party Support

The electoral district is the fundamental unit of representation in single- and multi-member electoral systems, yet most research shows little interest in district effects on election outcomes, focusing instead on national and individual factors. This is problematic as parties and candidates often put a great deal of effort into district-based campaigns. How, then, can we best capture district effects on party support? We propose a new method using official election returns and geospatial techniques. The result is a measure of how much of a party's vote share is explained by district effects. Using data from the 2006–2019 Canadian federal elections, we find that, on average, 6 to 10 per cent of the variation in a party's vote in Canada is explained by district effects. While district effects on party support are trivial for some districts, in others they account for more than 80 per cent of the variance in party vote shares. The effect of districts on party support is composed, in part, of electoral context, province, socio-economic factors and district campaign intensity. Importantly, the size and sources of district effects on party support vary across parties, suggesting heterogeneity. The benefits of our approach are threefold: (1) it is cost-effective, (2) it can be easily replicated in any setting—past or present—where districts are relevant electoral units and where districting is nonpartisan, and (3) it is responsive to differences in district composition and parties’ campaign effort.