This report examines the ways in which zoning laws affect housing and schooling opportunities in the Buffalo region. It begins with an examination of two communities--the Martin Luther King Park neighborhood in Buffalo and the suburban Village of East Aurora. In addition to the two Buffalo communities where discriminatory zoning has caused extreme…

Inter-district racial and socioeconomic segregation continue to affect students' educational opportunities. Housing mobility programs provide a way for low-income families to access lower-poverty and higher-performing schools in nearby districts. However, changing schools is also disruptive for students. Through interviews with 67 low-income Black…

This case study examined how the Michigan Youth Policy Fellows program--which aimed to create a space for a team of adolescents to engage in a collaborative photovoice project with peers from diverse backgrounds--empowered young people to critically analyze and interrupt racial segregation. The study describes how nine racially and…

In "Striving in Common," Jennifer Jellison Holme and Kara S. Finnigan seek to build a bridge between two largely disparate, yet interconnected, conversations--those among education reformers on the one hand, and urban reformers on the other. In this carefully considered volume, the authors show how the challenges faced by urban schools…

The purpose of this research is to examine the prevalence of racially diverse high schools in order to understand the conditions that create or inhibit the existence of diverse and equitable schools. We analyzed Texas state demographic data for schools in order to understand the scarcity of racially diverse campuses. We then utilized mapping and…

This article is a commentary on "Unwrapping the Suburban "Package Deal": Race, Class, and School Access," by Anna Rhodes and Siri Warkentien. Although guided by powerful ideals of equal opportunity, American schools are deeply unequal. As historians of education have taught, children of different racial, ethnic, and class…

In an effort to challenge the dominant discourses of college access and highlight nondominant discourses of college access such as geographic racism and segregation, I employ a Critical Geographic College Access (CGCA) framework. This framework consists of critical geographic theories such as power-geometry and spatial mismatch. Using Geographic…

The purpose of this "Equity by Design" brief is to provide information to parents, community members, and school district leaders and teachers about the relationship between housing policy and school policy. Specifically, this brief provides a succinct history of U.S. housing policy, discusses some current educational policies that…

This article reconstructs the story behind "Freeman v. Pitts" (1992), one of the main US Supreme Court cases that made it easier for school districts to terminate court desegregation orders and that, in turn, helped to propel a widely documented trend: the resegregation of southern schools. The case in part hinged on the question of…

When the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was killed by a white Ferguson police officer in August, researcher Richard Rothstein put his other projects aside to investigate a question that many otherwise well-informed people were asking--Why did this St. Louis suburb so closely resemble the stereotype of an urban ghetto, with pervasive poverty…

The enduring condition of racial and ethnic segregation in schools and housing in metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut, is rooted in historical and contemporary racial discrimination and in practices and policies that exacted disparate harm on Black and Latinx people. School segregation both reflects and reinforces segregation in housing that was…

This policy brief provides a review of the social science evidence on the housing-school nexus, highlighting the problem of reoccurring racial segregation and inequality absent strong, proactive federal or state integration policies. Three areas of research are covered: (a) the nature of the housing-school nexus; (b) the impact of school…

As the charter school sector expands rapidly with federal support amid on-going diversification and growing segregation among traditional public school students, this article examines existing patterns of segregation in charter schools. Prior research has demonstrated that charter schools are substantially more segregated than our already…

This article reviews the impacts of the civil rights policies framed in the 1960s and the anti-civil rights political and legal movements that reversed them. It documents rising segregation by race and poverty. The policy reversals and transformation of U.S. demography require a new civil rights strategy. Vast immigrations, the sinking White…

This article summarizes African Americans' ongoing struggle for quality education in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by utilizing school district data and secondary sources. The historic integration effort in the Milwaukee Public Schools system is outlined and the impact of sustained segregation, in the midst of significant changes to Milwaukee's social and…