What Shapes Social Policy in Practice? Allocation Logics of a Federal Place-Based Education Program

• In Event: Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 13. Spatial Inequality

Abstract

Delegated governance—federal policy pursued through third-party organizations—has become central to neoliberal U.S. social policy making, yet how much federal agencies shape what programs do in practice remains unclear. We examine the U.S. Department of Education’s Promise Neighborhood program, a federal place-based initiative grounded in an ecological model of child development that funds local coalitions to coordinate support across education, health, housing, safety, and economic development domains. Drawing on principal–agent perspectives, we ask whether shifting federal priorities embedded in annual Notices of Funding Availability (NOFA) steer the emphasis of Promise Neighborhood sites, or whether programmatic focus instead better matches local conditions and need or organizational expertise and capacity. Using all Promise Neighborhood application portfolios for implementation sites awarded grants between the 2011 and 2023 fiscal years obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests (n=39), we systematically catalogue proposed in situ interventions to create a taxonomy schema. We then examine whether sites’ programmatic emphasis aligns with: (1) domain-specific federal priority signals from each cycle’s NOFA, (2) neighborhood conditions tied to racial/ethnic dynamics, economic disadvantage, and housing market characteristics, and (3) organizational capacity measured via grantee focus or cross-sector partnership networks. Preliminary findings reveal broadly holistic intervention portfolios but meaningful cross-site variation in domain focus, and indicate that shifts in federal priority signals are not clearly associated with applicants’ allocation of policy effort, suggesting limits to federal steering. This project examines the development of on-the-ground federal programming, and offers insight into both the possibilities and the contextual constraints of place-based reform.

Authors

• Alexandra Cooperstock, Brown University

• Maggie Wood, Washington University in St. Louis

• Jason F Jabbari, Washington University in St. Louis