Educational ‘redlining’ that the federal government promoted still affects public school boundaries and attendance zones, limiting choice. (Analysis)
by Jude Schwalbach
This month marks the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional.
While public schools can no longer discriminate against students based on their race, unfortunately, they continue to use school district and attendance area boundaries to exclude or limit students’ opportunities based on where they live.
Oftentimes, the only way for students to access higher-quality public schools than the ones they’re assigned to is by moving inside their attendance boundaries. However, this option is only available to families who can afford to do so since housing costs typically increase based on their proximity to better schools.
In some cases, families lie about their home address–also known as address sharing–so their children can go to better schools. But falsifying an address can carry major risks, including prison time, in the 24 states that criminalize it.
Unfortunately, living on the wrong side of a school boundary isn’t just bad luck. Even today, schools and governments gerrymander boundaries to exclude students they perceive as undesirable.
Moreover, this practice carries an unsavory past since gerrymandered boundaries sometimes reflect the lingering effects of redlining–now illegal racist zoning policies.
Nearly a century ago, federal agencies drew 239 color-coded maps identifying the lending risks associated with particular neighborhoods. However, eligibility for these loans was based on varying demographic factors, including race.
Neighborhoods that housed large minority populations were often color-coded red and marked as “hazardous.” The Federal Housing Administration’s official Underwriting Manual even went so far as to state that redlining policies would help prevent “large numbers of inharmonious racial groups” from attending the same schools.
While a series of federal laws eventually outlawed housing redlining, many school boundaries still reinforce the old redlined boundaries, limiting students’ public education options.
For example, the map in Figure 1 shows the attendance areas for Cranbrook and Barrington Road Elementary Schools in Columbus, Ohio, ranked 2,146th and 165th overall respectively by the Ohio 2023 Performance Index.
The high-performing Barrington Elementary School’s neighborhoods were exclusively zoned as Blue or Green, the best possible ratings provided by the federal government, back in the 1930s. Meanwhile, most of the neighborhoods assigned to Cranbrook Elementary Schools, at that time, were rated as “hazardous” (red) or “declining” (yellow).
Figure 1: School Redlining in Columbus Ohio
Source: National Center for Education Statistics; “Mapping Inequality,” https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/.
The student populations of these public schools are still divided by race and socioeconomic status. Yet these boundaries block students from attending schools that are closer to their homes or that are a better fit.
For instance, some students living along King Avenue near the boundary line are only about a mile from Barrington Elementary, but they are assigned to Cranbrook, which is three times that distance.
This is just one of the many examples that show how broken public school assignment is nationwide.
A new report by yes. Every kid. Showcases how some policymakers have tried to ameliorate these barriers so students’ public school options aren’t solely determined by their geographic location. Specifically, the report highlights three key policies that can expand public school access today:
- Strong open enrollment laws, which let students attend any public school with available seats, have been passed in 16 states;
- States should not criminalize address sharing, as 26 states no longer do;
- One state, Idaho, prohibits address discrimination which means that school districts cannot select students based on where they live.
Weakening these barriers is a popular policy, as 78% of school parents support strong open enrollment laws according to March polling by EdChoice. Moreover, six states, most with bipartisan political support, strengthened their open enrollment laws last year, letting students attend any public school with open seats, regardless of where they live.
While 43 states permit some sort of public school student transfer, most of these laws are weak and don’t prioritize allowing students to get to better public schools. Brown vs. Board of Education was seven decades ago, and state policymakers still need to take important steps to make schools more accessible to all students by weakening the barriers that residential assignment imposes on families so students can attend schools that are the right fit.
Originally published by the Reason Foundation. Republished with permission.
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