During the 20th century, federally sanctioned housing "redlining" influenced the composition of neighborhoods in large cities across the country, including Washington, D.C. The term "redlining" came from the color-coded maps developed by the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) (on which mortgage lending under the Federal…

In this article, I draw on interviews with teachers and administrators at a secondary neighborhood public school in Washington, DC about their perceptions of how the school is viewed by external stakeholders and the impact of those perceptions within an urban education market. Extant empirical research on market forces and effects has not…

We measure the relationship between travel time to school and students' likelihood of transfer (and where they transfer to), attendance, and test scores in Washington, DC. Travel time to school is especially salient in DC, where roughly three-quarters of students attend a school other than the one tied to their neighborhood. A longer commute is…

In dozens of U.S. cities, more than one in five students now attend charter schools. Charter school expansion has fueled an increasingly energetic discussion among advocates: How large a share of urban schools should be charters? Is the ideal New Orleans, where nearly all public schools are charter schools? Or does that create demands on charters…

This study of 952 fifth and sixth graders in Washington, DC, and Alexandria, Virginia, found that students who were offered the "Higher Achievement" program had higher test scores in mathematical problem solving and were more likely to be admitted to and attend private competitive high schools. "Higher Achievement" is a…

School districts close schools for many appropriate reasons. School closure has now evolved into a school improvement strategy. Sometimes the strategy is to close the lowest-performing schools rather than low-enrollment schools and move the students into higher-achieving neighborhood schools. School closure also has become a common strategy to…

Increasing parental choice has been a leading theme of recent education policy intended to enhance the academic achievement of low-performing students in the United States. These policies aim to "level the playing field" in access to high-quality education for disadvantaged students who cannot otherwise afford higher-quality schooling…

Over the past 15 years, federal, state, and local officials have pursued a broad range of reforms aimed at ensuring that the nation's public school system is more accountable--that it delivers a rich, full education for children in communities across the country. New research from the Kettering Foundation and Public Agenda suggests that there are…

For a period of 85 years, the M Street/Dunbar High School was an academically elite, all-black public high school in Washington, D.C. As far back as 1899, its students came in first in citywide tests given in both black and white schools. Over this 85-year span, approximately 80 percent of M Street/Dunbar's graduates went on to college, even…

This article appraises the decision of Judge J. Skelly Wright in the "Hobsen v. Hansen" litigation invalidating de facto segregation in the schools in Washington, D.C. The "finding of fact" section of the decision attacked as discriminatory the schools' track system, the racial distribution of faculty, and the utilization of…