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The current study adds to the literature linking environmental pollution and disparities in educational outcomes among vulnerable populations by measuring variations in school performance scores in East Baton Rouge (EBR) Parish, Louisiana. The authors ask whether the unique, place-specific, results of a study such as the 2004 study by Pastor, Sadd, and Morello-Frosch, specifically the finding that schools’ academic performance scores are negatively related to proximity to major polluters, can be made somewhat more “general” by examining a similar relationship in another location. The authors closely approximate the model and methodology used by Pastor et al. and then respecify that model by including new independent variables with a particular focus on alternative and more nuanced measures of proximity to polluters as indicators of potential human exposure. Furthermore, they analyze the relationship between proximity and achievement in terms of disproportionate effects on human capital experienced by vulnerable populations. The findings provide evidence of “environmental ascription,” the idea that “place” (especially, attending school in polluted places) has ascriptive properties. The authors find that, all else equal, their several measures of proximity (to Toxics Release Inventory facilities in general, to high concentrations of toxic emissions, and to high-volume polluters of developmental neurotoxins) are significantly related to school performance scores throughout EBR Parish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of ascription often focus on the relationship between inherited characteristics such as gender, race, or social class and educational inequalities that limit life chances. This project proposes that reduced educational outcomes, and hence ascription, can also emerge from physical/spatial inequalities, specifically, the place where a child attends school. The place where one lives is often not a matter of choice; rather, it is determined by other ascriptive forces such as race and social class—hence making environmental ascription not only a physical dimension of inequality in the direct sense but also another dimension of socially constructed inequality in the indirect sense. The prevalence of toxins near schools and the potential correlation with limited life chances and racial and class characteristics remains an understudied topic in the environmental inequality literature. To explore these connections, the authors mapped the locations of the top 100 polluters of developmental and neurotoxins in the United States and then determined the number of schools within a 2-mile radius, as well as the racial and socioeconomic composition of the areas surrounding each site. Overall, it was found that a significant proportion of the top industrial polluters were located in close proximity to multiple schools and that these schools were more likely to be located in neighborhoods with a disproportionate number of poor, minority residents. Because this exploratory study reveals a pattern of exposure to developmental neurotoxins in precisely those places where educational outcomes are already compromised, it suggests the need for further research specifying the relationship between environmental inequalities and school performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]