Review of Redrawing the Lines: How Purposeful School System Redistricting Can Increase Funding Fairness and Decrease Segregation

Key Takeaway: New America report offers a helpful starting point for policy discussions focused on redistricting to address fiscal and demographic inequities across districts.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI (JANUARY 29, 2026) - A recent New America report argues that states can advance educational equity by redrawing school district boundaries to reduce within-state fiscal and demographic disparities. While the analysis has some methodological limitations, it offers policymakers a useful framework for understanding how existing district lines shape unequal access to resources.

Christopher Cleveland and Joshua Almes of Brown University reviewed Redrawing the Lines: How Purposeful School System Redistricting Can Increase Funding Fairness and Decrease Segregation . Their review assesses how well the report meets its goals, and it identifies areas where additional research could strengthen the discussion.

The report models three redistricting strategies: a "blank-slate" approach that creates new districts from Census tracts, a county-aligned approach that uses county boundaries, and targeted mergers of existing districts. Compared with current district maps, all three models increase equity in access to local property tax revenue and improve racial and economic integration, with the blank-slate approach producing the largest gains.

Cleveland and Almes do point to the need for further analysis, particularly to incorporate real-world constraints and to compare redistricting with other equity-focused reforms. Yet they conclude that the report successfully positions district boundaries as a meaningful policy lever and prompts informed discussion of strategies to advance educational equity.

Find the review, written by Christopher Cleveland and Joshua Almes, at: https://www.greatlakescenter.org

Find Redrawing the Lines: How Purposeful School System Redistricting Can Increase Funding Fairness and Decrease Segregation , authored by Zahava Stadler and Jordan Abbott and published by New America, at: https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/reports/redrawing-the-lines-school-system-redistricting-increase-funding-fairness-decrease-segregation/

NEPC Reviews ( https://nepc.colorado.edu/reviews ) provide the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC Reviews are made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: https://www.greatlakescenter.org .

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Contacts

Michelle Renee Valladares

Christopher Cleveland