They are two LAUSD schools just a mile apart.
Yet in many ways Canfield Avenue Elementary School and Shenandoah Elementary School in the Beverlywood and Reynier Village neighborhoods of Los Angeles are worlds apart.
Canfield’s student body is 46% white, while Shenandoah is 95% Black and Hispanic. Canfield has a pass rate of 77% on state reading exams, but just 31% of Shenandoah students met reading standards this year.
The difference between these two schools isn’t about curriculum or funding, but rather the highly uneven attendance zones from which Canfield and Shenandoah draw their students.
School attendance zones are meant to provide L.A. families with strong options for their children’s education. But a growing number of critics say the outdated school zones of LAUSD reinforce educational inequality by locking needy students out of a good education.
Canfield’s residential school attendance zone is 83% white, while Shenandoah’s is 55% Hispanic, 14% Black, and 6% Asian, according to research conducted by The Urban Institute, a nonprofit think-tank.
One dot corresponds to one person. Demographic data are based on 2010 census block data. Sources: US Census Bureau and Precisely.
“Such massive inequities between neighboring schools, both within the same local public school system, are difficult to justify,” wrote Urban Institute researchers Tomas Monarrez and Carina Chien, who studied the two schools for their 2021 research report “Dividing Lines.”
The differences in the nearby schools’ catchment areas is reflected in their enrollment, with 49% of Canfield kids experiencing poverty, compared to 93% at Shenandoah.
Monarrez and Chien found inequalities in school enrollment zones in districts across the country in their Urban Institute report, but singled out the racial segregation and uneven outcomes of LAUSD, the nation’s second-largest school district, for special attention.
The entrenched and segregationist school zones that populate Los Angeles Unified are the deliberate outcomes of a racist past, according to local parent turned researcher-and-author Tim DeRoche.
DeRoche, whose book, “A Fine Line,” explores school zones and segregation in Los Angeles and other districts across the country, said attendance zones ought to be abolished or completely overhauled, but admits it’s unlikely that’ll happen anytime soon in L.A.
“The district doesn’t want to touch them,” said DeRoche of LAUSD’s school zones, “because families overpaid for homes within those lines.”
LA Unified officials say school attendance boundaries are shaped by a range of factors, including geography, enrollment trends, and school capacity. A district spokesperson saud boundaries are reviewed and adjusted as needed to support students and communities.
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According to research conducted by Realtor.com, California has some of the largest public school real estate premiums in the U.S., with some of the most expensive school zones occurring within LAUSD.
Home buyers may think the unequal nature of LA’s school zones is a consequence of a tight real estate market, DeRoche said, but at least eight LA elementary schools have school zones that closely mirror the racist, redlining maps of the 1930s, according to documents he recently unearthed.
Redlining maps were developed by the federal government for use in mortgages and color-coded neighborhoods by their perceived investment risk. Areas with large numbers of Black residents were graded as “hazardous” and marked in red, leading to decades of disinvestment and segregation.
For at least eight LAUSD schools, today’s student attendance boundaries match those of the discredited redlining maps nearly exactly. If a map of the school zone is placed atop a redlining map, the boundaries are the same. Attendance zones for many other schools match those of redlining maps partially.
DeRoche made this startling discovery about LAUSD’s school zones while conducting an investigation of the district for his 2025 paper “Crisis in the School House,” which showed how lower- and middle-income families experience difficulty accessing top LAUSD elementary schools.
The use of school zones that mirror redlining maps occurs in public school districts across the country, but, in Los Angeles, it’s more prevalent than the national average, according to the research conducted by Monarrez and Chien for the Urban Institute.
Redlining isn’t the only vestige of America’s segregationist past that shows up in school zones. Across the country, modern school district boundaries mirror the boundaries of historical “sundown towns,” where threats against Black people maintained all-white areas.
Many of the school zones within LAUSD were drawn decades ago, and it’s unclear if those identified by DeRoche were drawn with the redlining maps in mind or not, he said.
But it’s unlikely many parents of students enrolled in sought-after LAUSD elementary schools such as Ivanhoe Elementary, Mt. Washington Elementary and Mar Vista Elementary are aware that their school zones reflect those racist maps, DeRoche said.
Mar Vista Elementary School Attendance Zone (Available to All)
Nick Melvoin, a second-term LAUSD school board member whose district includes Mar Vista, said he wasn’t aware Mar Vista’s attendance zone mirrors that of an old, local redlining map, until DeRoche told him.
The plain-spoken former attorney said he wasn’t surprised, though, given the history of exclusionary education policy in L.A. County, where Los Angeles Unified is but the largest of more than 70 local school districts.
“That is something that we don’t acknowledge,” said Melvoin.
Throughout the county and over time, a number of districts that are surrounded by and adjacent to LAUSD have carved themselves out of the larger, more diverse district of LAUSD, “so that they have a little bit more exclusivity,” Melvoin explained.
That list, he said, includes Beverly Hills Unified, Santa Monica-Malibu Unified and Culver City Unified.
In a perfect world, Melvoin said, maybe the attendance zone around Mar Vista in his own board district would be changed, but a better solution is to offer options that give families the choice to exit their local school zones and enroll in better options.
“I’d like a world where there are no enrollment boundaries, to really make sure that we’re equitable,” he said, “but where folks are still choosing their local schools, because we just have such a surplus of high quality options.”
Some of the non-zone school options for LAUSD families include magnet schools, charter schools and schools in the district’s Open Enrollment platform, where families may enroll in schools outside their zones, as long as there are seats.
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An LAUSD spokesperson said 40% of students enrolled in schools outside their zoned area in the 2024-25 school year, reflecting the pervasiveness and efficacy of the district’s school choice programs. That’s up from 28% a decade ago, the spokesperson said.
Critics, including DeRoche, say the district’s programs still don’t do enough to provide good options for families.
DeRoche’s 2025 report found enrollment is down 46% among 456 LAUSD elementary schools from their peak, while over half of these schools have seen enrollment decline by over 50% over the last two decades.
The decline has left a lot of open space in 39 high-performing schools, but that doesn’t mean LA students are filling them, according to DeRoche’s analysis. In fact, he and his team found nearly 7,000 empty seats in the sought-after schools.
LAUSD officials disputed the analysis, saying its use of peak enrollment to measure school capacity is inaccurate, because those schools were overcrowded then.
Melvoin said the district is working hard to make it easier for families to access schools outside their local zones, by providing its Open Enrollment platform to make it easier for families to enroll, and also by providing transportation for families that request it.
“Now, throughout LA Unified in every grade level, families have other choices,” he said. Dual language and magnet programs, charters and schools of advanced studies are a few of the options available, he said.
Beyond LA, a movement to promote school choice and eliminate dependence on zoned schools is gaining steam, said Derrren Bradford, president of the national education advocacy group 50CAN.
Bradford and his nonprofit are part of an alliance of more than 50 nonpartisan education groups committed to ending discriminatory public school district boundary lines, called the No More Lines Coalition.
The coalition argues that school boundaries are based on a student’s ZIP code and, de facto, a family’s wealth based on their home value. Formed last year, it has set a goal of ending the practice in all 50 states by 2030.
States, including Idaho, Nevada and Kansas, are already working to promote open enrollment with state laws that modify existing school zoning policies, said Bradford.
“Everything about how people think about where you go to school, and how you get into school is kind of up for public discussion right now, in a way that I think is helpful,” said Bradford. “Its time has come.”
