AAI announces the Center for Geography of Education Policy

LAWRENCE — The Achievement & Assessment Institute (AAI) at the University of Kansas has announced the Center for Geography of Education Policy. The center’s main purpose is to explore the ways that education policy and school management are both shaped by and shape geography.

The center is led by founding director Bryan Mann, associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies. CGEP was born from Mann’s own research on the intersections of geography and educational policy. His work includes exploring school district enrollment patterns, the relationship between space and educational inequality, and segregation in schools.

“The world has gotten familiar with thinking about what causes inequality through several different dimensions, whether they're race, economics or other markers that shape individuals' experiences. And I think increasingly, more scholars across disciplines are starting to understand that there's a spatial component to inequality,” Mann said. “My hope is that this center will give us another set of tools in solving some of these issues.” 

An example of this work is looking at demographic patterns and issues relating to newcomer and refugee students in a community and how people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds become integrated into schools, Mann said. CGEP can look at these trends and inform policy and practice to make sure schools are welcoming and safe places for students. 

The center touches on educational policy at the local, state and national levels, although Mann said a large part of the policy action like developing school district boundaries and enrollment patterns happens at the state level. At the local level, school districts could use CGEP research to ensure their schools are diverse and inclusive by looking at local demographic or housing patterns. 

“There are areas of this work that touch on multiple levels of governance in the U.S. structure. I really think it depends on the issue and it depends on the problem, but we hope to be able to be a part of the conversation,” Mann said. 

Part of the center's goal will be to host GIS maps online that can be shared with the public to allow for research findings to reach general audiences and influence real-world outcomes. Mann and his graduate students have already created multiple GIS maps that help people better visualize the relationship between geography and educational inequality and expect to have them on the center’s website once it is up. 

“I’m looking forward to sharing this work on the website and having it in a more centralized place. We have maps related to segregation in schools that we can share through the center as well,” Mann said. “Having the affiliation with AAI and the resources and capabilities that AAI provides is really exciting because I think there's a number of related projects that AAI can help elevate to the next level.”

Neal Kingston, AAI director and University Distinguished Professor, said that CGEP’s research fits well into AAI’s goals as a research center.

“AAI’s mission is to partner with local, state, national and global communities to apply scholarship to implement programs with direct public impact and develop and publishable generalizable knowledge that allows others to leverage those solutions,” Kingston said. “CGEP’s geographic methods make clear important spatial relationships that help us comprehend ways in which our educational communities are and are not working as expected. Among other considerations, this helps us better understand educational inequality.”