Suburban Advantage: A Historical Study of Education in Metropolitan Kansas City

Utilizing data drawn from the U.S. census, other sources of information on local school districts, desegregation battles and urban development, and interviews with key leaders in metropolitan Kansas City, this project will conduct a historical study of how the process of suburbanization contributed to educational and social inequality.  This study will consider a range of factors that affected the lives of children in more than thirty school districts, including race, social class, family structure and the communities they lived in.  This large metropolitan region included a variety of community types, but clear distinctions came to mark the status of youth in central city and suburban settings.   It is a dimension of educational and social inequality that has been largely excluded from policy discourse.  This study will establish just how it developed in a prototypical American metropolis. 

Program Personnel

Rury, Ph. D, John
Title: Principal Investigator
785-864-9697
E-mail