Educational data scientists often conduct research with the hopes of translating findings into lasting change through policy, civil society, or other channels. However, the bridge from research to practice can be fraught with sociopolitical frictions that impede, or altogether block, such translations -- especially when they are contentious or otherwise difficult to achieve. Focusing on one entrenched educational equity issue in US public schools -- racial and ethnic segregation -- we conduct randomized email outreach experiments and surveys to explore how local school districts respond to algorithmically-generated school catchment areas ("attendance boundaries") designed to foster more diverse and integrated schools. Cold email outreach to approximately 4,320 elected school board members across over 800 school districts informing them of potential boundary changes reveals a large average open rate of nearly 40%, but a relatively small click-through rate of 2.5% to an interactive dashboard depicting such changes. Board members, however, appear responsive to different messaging techniques -- particularly those that dovetail issues of racial and ethnic diversity with other top-of-mind issues (like school capacity planning). On the other hand, media coverage of the research drives more dashboard engagement, especially in more segregated districts. A small but rich set of survey responses from school board and community members across several districts identify data and operational bottlenecks to implementing boundary changes to foster more diverse schools, but also share affirmative comments on the potential viability of such changes. Together, our findings may support educational data scientists in more effectively disseminating research that aims to bridge educational inequalities through systems-level change.

翻译：教育数据科学家常怀揣将研究成果转化为政策、公民社会或其他渠道的持久变革之愿开展研究。然而，从研究到实践的桥梁常因社会政治摩擦而受阻，甚至完全阻断此类转化——尤其当研究课题存在争议或实现难度较大时。聚焦美国公立学校中一项根深蒂固的教育公平议题——种族与族裔隔离——我们通过随机电子邮件外展实验与问卷调查，探究地方学区如何回应旨在促进学校多元融合的算法生成的学校招生片区（"入学边界"）。向全美800多个学区的约4,320名当选学校董事会成员发送冷启动电子邮件，告知其边界可能调整，结果显示平均打开率高达近40%，但指向展示此类调整的交互式仪表盘的点击率相对较低，仅为2.5%。不过，董事会成员对不同信息传递策略反应不一——尤其是那些将种族与族裔多样性议题与其他首要关注议题（如学校容量规划）相结合的策略。另一方面，媒体报道推动了仪表盘的更高参与度，尤其在隔离程度更高的学区。来自多个学区学校董事会及社区成员的小规模但内容丰富的问卷回复，揭示了实施边界调整以促进学校多样性面临的数据与操作瓶颈，但也对这类调整的潜在可行性给予了肯定性评价。综合来看，我们的发现可支持教育数据科学家更有效地传播旨在通过系统层面变革弥合教育不平等的研究成果。