The 21st Century Cities Initiative at Johns Hopkins University has announced its 2021 grantees of the award for doctoral research on urban issues.  PIRL doctoral student Kiara Nerenberg was among those awarded the grant to help fund her research activities in support of her dissertation.  Kiara's dissertation focuses on the informal school-choice market and out-of-zone enrollments among K-12 students in Baltimore City, seeking to understand the causes and consequences of out-of-zone enrollment.  She will bring together longitudinal administrative enrollment data from Baltimore City Public Schools with geocoded crime data from the Baltimore Police Department, neighborhood demographics from the American Community Survey, and school characteristics from the National Center for Education Statistics in order to examine interrelated dynamics of out-of-zone enrollment at the student, school, and neighborhood levels.  Her study expounds a theory of the informal school-choice market that both structures and is structured by out-of-zone enrollments and uncovers previously unidentified mechanisms of inequality maintenance in student achievement and district segregation.  Congratulations Kiara!

For more information on the other awardees, visit the 21st Century Cities Initiative.