Expanding the Geography of Educational Opportunity: Can Housing Policy Improve the Achievement of Minority Youth?

• In Event: 038 - Regular Session. Sociology of Education: Disadvantaged Students in Advantaged Contexts

Abstract

Racial and economic segregation limits educational opportunities for poor and minority children in the United States. Although school choice (e.g. charter schools) has expanded within many districts, court rulings have severely limited inter-district school mobility options for students. Housing mobility programs now serve as one of the few ways that policymakers can provide low-income urban residents with access to better-resourced and higher quality suburban schools. However, evidence on the effects of relocating inner city youth to suburban communities on academic outcomes is mixed. Chicago’s Gautreaux program, while using weak measures and quasi-experimental techniques, found significant improvements in academic achievement for students who relocated to suburban neighborhoods and schools. Decades later, the Moving to Opportunity program, using an experimental design, found that moves to lower-income neighborhoods with only limited improvements in school quality had no significant effect on math and reading ability.

This study uses longitudinal residential data from the Baltimore Mobility Program, merged with achievement test score data from the Maryland State Department of Education, to examine changes in academic achievement resulting from participation in a voucher based mobility program. Our fixed effects models show a small yet significant dip in academic achievement immediately following the move. After this initial dip, however, students gradually improve their scores each year. Further analysis suggests that school change, rather than residential mobility, is the primary reason for the dip and that moving to a higher quality school is a protective factor, reducing the short-term negative effects of mobility.

Authors

• Stefanie Ann DeLuca, Johns Hopkins University

• Philip M.E. Garboden, Johns Hopkins University

• Anna Catherine Rhodes, Johns Hopkins University