The borders of rich and poor that divide America
School district borders in the United States are invisible lines that often divide rich and poor neighborhoods just down the road from one another.
The 50 borders with the starkest divide, according to a study published Tuesday by nonprofit EdBuild, are home to neighborhoods with an average poverty rate of nine percent that run alongside neighborhoods with an average poverty rate of 46 percent, a difference of 37 percent.
The U.S. has nearly 4,000 borders along which the two school districts have poverty rates that differ by 14 percent or more.
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The report highlighted the five districts with the most drastic divide in the country. We took a look at what they found, below.
Detroit, Michigan
Differences in poverty rates along school district borders often run along racial lines, and perhaps nowhere is that better illustrated than along the border between Detroit, which is predominantly black, and Grosse Pointe, which is about as white as can be.
The neighbors have a very public history. Detroit and Grosse Pointe were both named in a Supreme Court case decided in 1974 that said desegregation couldn't be forced across school district borders.
Four years earlier, when that case was filed, Grosse Pointe had a poverty rate of three percent compared to Detroit's rate of around 15 percent, according to the study. Grosse Pointe's poverty rate is now 6.52%, and Detroit's is 49 percent.
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham's school district borders zigzag in ways that make little sense if you don't know how they came to be.
Small enclaves of wealthy and often white areas in the region have, over the years, broken away from Birmingham to form their own much wealthier (and whiter) districts, creating several borders that divide districts with hugely different poverty rates.
Six of the borders in Birmingham are among the 50 borders with the greatest poverty rate disparities in the nation, and none is worse than the divide between Birmingham and Vestavia Hills.
The poverty rate in Vestavia Hills hovers around six percent. In Birmingham, it's 48.5 percent.
Clairton, Pennsylvania
The economy of Clairton, just outside Pittsburgh, imploded with the decline of manufacturing.
With that implosion went the ability for Clairton to fund its schools, forcing it to rely on money from the state government. When Pennsylvania cut part of its education funding several years back, that lifeline faded.
West Jefferson Hills, right next door, was never as reliant on manufacturing. Their self-reliance is not in question.
The result is the third worst poverty rate disparity among neighboring school districts in the country. West Jefferson Hills has a poverty rate of 6.5 percent, while Clairton's poverty rate is just above 48 percent.
Dayton, Ohio
Dayton also fell victim to the erosion of the manufacturing economy, though not all parts of the area succumbed to the decline.
Dayton's poverty rate hovers right around seven percent compared with neighboring Oakwood, with a poverty rate over 47 percent.
Ohio, according to the study, allows students to transfer to districts so long as those districts want to take part in the program. Oakwood does not participate.
Balsz, near Phoenix, Arizona
Both Balsz Elementary School District and neighboring Scottsdale Unified have seen a significant increase in the population of immigrants over the past several decades. But Balsz's immigrant population has climbed to four times what it was in 1980, whereas Scottsdale Unified's immigrant population has only doubled.
Immigrants to the U.S. tend to earn less money than residents born in the country, and the two districts show how this disparity can play out over time. Scottsdale Unified's poverty rate is 10.6 percent, while Balsz's poverty rate is nearly five times that amount.
Despite the disparity, Balsz "receives 30 percent less in state and local funding than Scottsdale," according to the study.
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Colin is Mashable's US & World Reporter. He previously interned at Foreign Policy magazine and The American Prospect. Colin is a graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When he's not at Mashable, you can most likely find him eating or playing some kind of sport.
