Affordable Housing, School Segregation, and Black Student Achievement

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research in Progress Roundtable Session One
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Issues in Education Policy: Finance Reform, Segregation, and Affordable Housing (Table 4)

Abstract

Historically, de jure systemic racism in the United States (U.S.) and the California (C.A.) housing market resulted in a lack of Black family access to housing in affluent neighborhoods and generated a Black-White wealth and income gap still observed today. But even after eliminating much of this outright discrimination, these economic gaps cause de facto segregation of many Black families from affluent and primarily White neighborhoods. This practice is especially prevalent in California, where housing costs are particularly burdensome, and Black families are unlikely to find affordable housing in affluent school districts. My doctoral research aims to empirically document the degree that higher average home prices in C.A. keep Black school children out of affluent districts that are more likely to boast higher standardized test scores. The result is that Black school children are likely to attend Black-White segregated and low-socioeconomic status (SES) school districts. Thus, holding other explanatory factors constant, I set out to measure the influence of the degree of such segregation on the average sixth-grade-level performance of Black school children on Math, English, and combined standardized tests. The goal here is to show that local housing policies that explicitly keep less affluent Black households from residing in C.A. school districts are a new form of "Jim Crow Laws" that work to maintain Black-White opportunity gaps. It is reasonable to think of the "not in my backyard "(NIMBY) attitude towards the allowance of affordable housing as serving as a clear form of structural racism. The importance of the empirical-based multiple regression analysis I plan to offer is to document these relationships and the magnitude at which they occur.

Author

• Cassandra R. Henderson, California Commission on Teacher Credentialing
  Presenting Author