Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Educational Leadership, 2006. / Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-188).

About one hundred years after British and Spanish navigations off Vancouver's shoreline, early settlement had resulted in the first two school locations within the area now known as Vancouver City: one in the north, associated with the Hastings Sawmill, the other in the south, connected with a Fraser River fishing settlement. Most of the small early settlements had been established for logging or fishing, and later for clearing of small-holding farms. The choice of Granville (later Vancouver) as the C.P.R. terminus speeded the rate of settlement and, with the incorporation of Vancouver in 1886, the regime of the Vancouver school system began. Inside the City boundaries, the first schools were within a half-mile to a mile walking distance of the early centre of settlement at Carrall Street. As public transport and False Creek bridges extended settlement around the nucleus, new schools were built within a half-mile of street-car service and at distances increasing outwards from the City centre. Outside the City, South Vancouver became a municipality in 1906; and Point Grey became one in 1908. They shared six small schools representing six small widely-separated settlements. Elsewhere, there was only the Provincial government school in District Lot #301 which, with Hastings Townsite, was annexed by the City in 1911. New school locations within all these areas reflected a rapid increase in new settlement from 1908 until 1914, dependent upon the extension of Interurban and street-car lines from the City. It was towards the end of the pre-war period that each of the two municipalities began to organize its own high school, a few years later than the first City high school, King Edward, which had been re-located south of False Creek. The real estate boom, 1908-12, had marked a doubling of City population to over 100,000; that of South Vancouver to nearly 40,000 and that of Point Grey to about 3,000. But when the economic growth was retarded by war and depression, 1914-24, the school-building programme stagnated. Overcrowding and temporary accommodation contrasted from the twenty-five new locations of the preceding era. By 1925, however, there were signs of renewed growth in the school pattern. Resulting from improved economic conditions and guided by the findings of the Putnam-Weir Report on schools, new locations were planned coincidental with the passing of the Town Planning Act. The new expansion, 1925-29, was very noticeable in the fastest-growing western part of Point Grey municipality where there had been much post-war "new" family settlement as well as outward movement from the City. South Vancouver, meanwhile, was slowly recovering from financial reverses which had left the schools unimproved for approximately eight years. The ensuing building programme, made necessary by extensive post-war settlement, started with accommodation additions to schools nearest the 16th Avenue City boundary and included one new location, the McBride Elementary School. In both municipalities much home-building had resulted from the extension of City settlement along the lines of communication and over the boundaries at 16th Avenue and Alma Road. Within the City, elementary school location had completed a half-mile pattern over the original area; but empty sections remained in the eastern part of Hastings Townsite. There, however, school sites had been acquired. As in the other two political units, more high schools were needed, especially as the Grade IX population formed 50% of the high school enrolment. In 1928, answering growing public demands for technical education, the Vancouver Technical School was built in the south-eastern part of the City, within easy reach of South Vancouver students. Other new buildings were junior high ones—according to the recommendations of the Putnam-Weir Report. After the three municipalities' amalgamation, from about 1929 to 1944, plans for new schools—as for urban development generally—were in abeyance due to unsettled social and economic conditions. Again temporary measures, such as the use of portable classrooms, were made necessary from increasing densities at the old school locations—first in high schools, then in the primary grades. Rising birth rates after 1934 as well as post-war immigration warned of greatly increased enrolments for post-war years. The succeeding fifteen-year span, 1945-60, saw the greatest building programme since 1886, in all types of schools. Especially were the new secondary locations notable—in the formerly empty or sparsely-occupied areas of eastern Hastings Townsite, the south-eastern sector, and the former C.P.R. land in central Point Grey. Not only had there been an extraordinary increase in family settlement in all peripheral regions of Vancouver, but there was a decrease in family settlement around the old nuclei—where there was a high population ratio of single workers and older persons. Induced settlement in the form of new housing estates had speeded the population regionalism, and it increased the danger of over-building elementary schools if birth rates should fall considerably in future years. An epilogue to the outward movement in the location pattern was the sale of C.P.R. land in the central area and the emergence there of a new residential core, with planned schools and shopping centre. The new residential heart of the City was approximately three miles south of the original nucleus on Burrard Inlet, and its new secondary school location immediately south of the old pioneer high school. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation entitled “Educational choice and educational space” aims to explore the confluence of constructed space and geographic space using a supply-side context for New Zealand’s public school system of quasi-open enrollment. In Part I, New Zealand’s state and state-integrated school system across four urban areas is analyzed spatially and analytically in an attempt to learn about supply-side motivations of individual schools for selecting students. Since 1999 there has been a gradual encroachment on the open enrollment initiative due to excess demand for certain schools altering the landscape of choice. Most studies of school choice examine household motivations to choose schools- what is referred to as the demand-side dynamic of the education market. The contribution of this study to educational choice literature is provided by the opportunity presented by New Zealand’s public education system to examine the supply-side dynamic. School motivation for choosing students is warranted by the fact that individual schools are funded on a per-pupil basis and they are able make operational decisions that include defining their own catchment areas (home zones) when oversubscribed. In order to test the hypothesis that schools are behaving selectively, I leverage boundary discontinuity design (BDD) (Bayer, Ferreira, & McMillan, 2007) and meta-analysis techniques and use census data that reflects neighborhood composition closely linked to the time at which the home zone was drawn. Household characteristics as represented by 2006 census data are within 5 years old at the time the home zone was drawn in 53-percent of cases, and range to a maximum of 7 years for the full sample of schools used in the analysis. The result is a truly unique opportunity to examine evidence of school selective behavior while accounting for logistical, geographic and market features. Across a sample of 886 publicly funded state and state-integrated schools in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin I evaluate 372 schools that implemented enrollment schemes with geographically defined home zones as of the 2009 school year. I find that schools are engaging in selective behavior across one or more household socioeconomic or demographic characteristics – with indicators of deprivation and minority status consistently maintaining significance in boundary and zone discontinuity. Between 37 and 52-percent of schools sample-wide are estimated to be participating in gerrymandering in small to large ways (discontinuities were greater than 0.2 standard deviations, favoring households with affluence and non-minority status). Cases of medium to large discrimination (standardized mean differences of >0.5) are evident in 12 to 26-percent of schools. Schools are zoning out households that contain higher proportions of minorities with an emphasis on non-indigenous (Māori) minorities, in particular the Pasifika group. When examining schools separately by city, sector, gender and school student body socioeconomic status I find heterogeneity in school behavior. Findings corroborate and expand upon previous work regarding New Zealand’s policies of enrollment schemes and their adverse effects. Part II expands the implications of school-level selective behaviors to the macro setting of the metropolitan area education market. Because school zones are not mandated to be mutually exclusive or completely exhaustive of the metro area they serve, it is possible that home zones overlap in some areas and provide no coverage in others. School choice is modeled using an ordered probit approach where the number of home zones claiming the household (census meshblock) is the dependent variable. I also calculate meshblock-level schooling opportunity sets (SOS) for the primary and secondary sectors using methods developed by (Gibson & Boe-Gibson, 2014). The SOS factors household-school proximity with school performance into a summary estimate of educational opportunity for each meshblock. The determinants of each meshblock’s choice set and SOS are modeled as a function of household characteristics, with controls for geographic and market influences. I find evidence that both the size and quality of household educational opportunities are statistically significantly associated with socioeconomic status and racial composition. Affluence is a strong predictor of additional choices and higher quality school access while racial composition continues to be negatively associated with both. The “lay of the education landscape” is then considered for each metro area using the Index of Dissimilarity and mapping techniques. The exercise reveals helpful insight into each of the four education markets. The dissertation concludes with a discussion on the implications and relevance of this work to educational reform discourse and planning for both New Zealand and abroad.

The Port Elizabeth College (PE College) was founded in January 2002 as a result of the merger between the three technical colleges in Port Elizabeth, namely, Russell Road, Bethelsdorp and Iqhayiya. Similar courses are offered in duplicated facilities, contrary to the sentiment of the legislation requiring the reduction of the number of technical colleges from 152 to 50. A further problem experienced by the management of PE College is that the Russell Road campus is so full that it is necessary to turn prospective students away, while the other campuses are under-utilised. The focus of this study is the evaluation of the location and coverage offered by the six PE College sites of delivery. The study examined the physical facilities of the PE College and investigated the requirements of staff and students, regarding their campuses of choice. The objectives were achieved through site visits to the six campuses, as well as a quantitative, structured, self-administered survey of all staff and students of the PE College in October 2003. The questions used in the survey were selected only after a literature review of location theory, which highlighted the factors to be considered in location decisions. Completed questionnaires were received from 1 256 student and 120 staff respondents. The empirical study showed that 13,2% of students and 9,2% of staff wished to study or work at a different campus. Sixty-eight percent of students who wanted to change campuses preferred to be based at the Russell Road campus, which is already full. As a result, this study has led to the recommendation that the PE College should use a product-based location strategy, where each campus specialises in a different field of study. Although this location strategy will not necessarily offer the greatest accessibility to students and staff, it will result in the least amount of duplication, and, therefore, reduced costs.

M.A. (Geography) / Please refer to full text to view abstract