There is a reciprocal relationship between residential segregation and segregated schools. Federal housing policy and historical patterns of housing segregation have created stark divides between wealthy, largely white communities with high property values and predominantly minority communities with more limited resources. Due to the local nature of school funding, communities with higher property value can generate more funding for schools, leading to more comprehensive educational resources and higher test scores, which in turn drives up the price of homes in the school district. In this way, the socioeconomic and racial divisions between neighborhoods and schools perpetuate themselves in a vicious cycle. Just as residential and school segregation are mutually reinforcing, so too are the effects of residential and school integration. Children attending integrated schools are more likely to live in integrated neighborhoods as adults and send their own children to integrated schools. The effects are reciprocal, working positively in both directions, as Professor Roslyn Mickelson demonstrates compellingly in her NCSD Research Brief, The Reciprocal Relationship Between Housing and School Integration.
PRRAC works to integrate residential areas and support community-led efforts to integrate schools by race and socioeconomic status in order to break the cycle of mutually-reinforcing housing and school-based segregation.
Recent Advocacy Documents
- Housing-Schools Working Group Comment Letter on the Proposed Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule (April 2023)
- Letter asking Transportation Secretary Buttigieg to join HUD and ED in joint guidance letter on housing and school integration (February 2023)
- Letter asking Education Secretary Cardona to join HUD and DOT in joint guidance letter on housing and school integration (February 2023)
PRRAC Publications and Resources
Recent Housing-Schools Articles from Poverty & Race Journal
- Understanding the First, Second, and Third Order Effects on Disparities in K-12 Funding and Outcomes (April – July 2023 P&R Journal)
- K-12 Schools Remain Free to Pursue Diversity Through Race-Neutral Programs (April – July 2023 P&R Journal)
- The Lynchpin of Educational Inequality— And the Myth Behind It (April – July 2023 P&R Journal)
- School Finance as Racial Subordination (April – July 2023 P&R Journal)
- The Interconnection Between School Finance and Segregation (April – July 2023 P&R Journal)
- Post-Move Supports Can Increase the Likelihood of Long-Term Benefits from Housing Mobility Programs (Oct – Dec 2022 P&R Issue)
- How Social Capital Research Can Help Redress Segregation (Oct – Dec 2022 P&R Issue)
- Parents’ Conceptions of School Enrollment as Property (Jan – Sept 2022 P&R Issue)
- “Long Island High School Students Advocate for Housing and School Integration” by Elaine Gross (Oct – Dec 2021 P&R Issue)
- Excerpt: “Between the Lines” (Oct – Dec 2021 P&R Issue)
One Nation Indivisible
One Nation Indivisible was a project of PRRAC and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. The project sought to harness the power of storytelling and strategic organizing to support and celebrate people struggling to create, sustain and improve racially, culturally, linguistically and socioeconomically integrated schools, communities, workplaces, as well as social institutions.
Other Resources/Materials
- Comment Letter: Prioritizing Educational Equity and School Integration in San Francisco’s Housing Element (Housing and Education Advocates, February 2022)
- Comment Letter: Additional Recommendations for Fiscal Year 2023 Department of Education Budget (PRRAC et al, December 2021)
- How Real Estate Agents Can (and Should) Promote Diverse Schools (a project in collaboration with the National Association of Realtors©, June 2021)
- PRRAC & CLPHA, Housing Mobility and School Integration HousingIs 2020 PowerPoint Presentation
- Jennifer Jellison Holme, Erica Frankenberg, Joanna Sanchez, Kendra Taylor, Sarah De La Garza, Michelle Kennedy, “Subsidized Housing and School Segregation: Examining the Relationship Between Federally Subsidized Affordable Housing and Racial and Economic Isolation in Schools,” Education Policy Analysis Archives (November 2020)
- Planning for Equity Policy Guide (American Planning Association, May 2019)
- Washington, DC DRAFT Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing (Access to Proficient Schools Section) (June 2018)
- Briefing Report: Public Education Funding Inequity: In an Era of Increasing Concentration of Poverty and Resegregation (US Commission on Civil Rights, January 2018) – includes a chapter on “How Housing Policy Impact Educational Opportunity”
- Draft Appendix to AFFH Guidebook – “Location of Proficient Schools and School Assignment Policies” (December 2016/never published)
- HUD-ED-DOT Joint Letter on Diverse Schools and Communities (June 2016)
- Confronting School and Housing Segregation in the Richmond Region (2017)
- HUD Housing-Schools Report Breaking Down Barriers: Housing, Neighborhoods, and Schools of Opportunity (May 2016)
- Department of Housing & Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, “Breaking Down Barriers: Housing, Neighborhoods, and Schools of Opportunity” (April 2016)
- Charter Schools, Gentrification, and Weighted Lotteries (Shelterforce, February 2016)
- Coordinating Housing and Education Policy to Support Racial and Economic Integration: a February 3, 2011 Roundtable at HUD. In early 2011, PRRAC convened officials from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Education, and the Department of Justice to explore ways in which the two agencies might work collaboratively to advance school and housing integration, recognizing that these two systems interact in highly interdependent ways.
You must be logged in to post a comment.