Study Links Zoning to Education Disparities
Location, location, location.
This mantra of real estate agents and their clients alike is now the target of a new report from the Brookings Institution linking housing prices and zoning practices to effectively depriving low-income students of high-quality schools.
Using test scores from schools in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country, senior research analyst Jonathan Rothwell found that housing costs an average of 2.4 times more—close to $11,000 more per year—near a high-scoring public school than near a low-scoring one. Housing prices can be a barometer of zoning practices because near high-scoring schools, the homes are typically larger and fewer and more expensive than in the areas surrounding low-scoring schools. Zoning regulations that intend to keep population density low segregate cities and towns by race and income, according to the study released today.
It shows that the average low-income student attends a school that scores at the 42nd percentile on state exams, while the average middle/high-income student attends a school that scores at the 61st percentile on state exams.
These test-score gaps were especially pronounced in the Northeastern part of the country, which claimed six of the top 10 largest achievement gaps of the 100 regions ranked by the report.
While the idea that economic segregation was a function of zoning practices isn’t new, Mr. Rothwell said his research is among the first to explicitly link the two and tie the results to access to high-quality schools. In this case, quality was determined by state test scores calculated from data listed on GreatSchools.org.
“I haven’t seen anything that tries nationally to document the financial barriers that low-income families face to get into high-scoring public schools,” Mr. Rothwell said, noting that charter schools and voucher programs are some of the more-popular methods used to help families get around having access only to district-run schools near where they live. “I do think zoning is an underlying problem.”
Deciding where different types of housing will be constructed in a given city can be a highly politically charged process, and there are few drivers for changing existing housing patterns, Mr. Rothwell said.
Modern zoning practices came about in the 1920s, along with the rise of the automobile, making living farther away from urban centers more practical. Suburbs emerged, created by families who felt they were losing political power in cities. In their own cities and towns, they could create housing laws and schools in a way that suited them, Mr. Rothwell said.
Reforming these entrenched systems is unlikely to happen without the involvement of the federal government, he said.
“What I would like to see: something like a free market for density and zoning policies that do not discriminate against small homes or multifamily units,” Mr. Rothwell said. In other words, housing of all different styles and price ranges could be mixed together without restriction.
Research has shown that places with exclusionary residential zoning—that discourage or prevent the development of inexpensive housing—would have more low-cost residences available if the rules had been relaxed, said Rolf Pendall, director of the Metropolitan Housing & Communities Policy Center at the Washington-based Urban Institute, a public policy and good-government think tank.
“That’s why the people who live there erect these barriers and keep them there. In many cases, they try to keep apartments and low-cost houses out exactly because they want to separate their kids from the children of people who can’t afford expensive housing. Sometimes they also think they will pay less in taxes to educate the children of the well-to-do than to educate the children of less-affluent households,” Mr. Pendall said.
Some cities don’t have much of an opportunity to adjust their housing patterns, however, even if they want to.
In Hartford, Conn., which is embedded in an area Mr. Rothwell ranked as having among the highest test-score gaps between low-income and higher-income schools, poverty is the norm. The median income is about $24,000 a year, said David Panagore, the city’s chief operating officer.
The city, with about 124,000 residents and 18 square miles of land, can’t impose zoning changes on the wealthier surrounding areas, he said. While Mr. Rothwell’s study may be on point, the city has little ability to send lower-income students to schools outside its boundaries where there are children of greater means. (The study used metropolitan areas as defined by the U.S. Census, which don’t necessarily align with district or city boundaries.)
Connecticut has tried to give districts an incentive to create magnet schools, funding those schools at a higher level than traditional public schools, so that they will draw students from wealthier neighborhoods, he said.
Mr. Panagore said the power of city planners and zoning boards may be overstated in Mr. Rothwell’s analysis.
“Planners don’t say ‘I want to create high-density housing over here.’ They don’t get to do that,” he said. “They can’t act contrary to the community’s wishes.”
In some instances, cities are making strides to change long-standing housing patterns, although those opportunities don’t come along very often, said Chris Poynter, a spokesman for the city of Louisville, Ky. The Jefferson County school district, which includes Louisville, has struggled with finding a solution to desegregating schools that is supported by courts.
“It’s going to take a lot of work over many decades to diversify our housing stock,” Mr. Poynter said. One recently built development, NuLu, involved tearing down barracks-style public housing, and rebuilding to give access to housing to everyone from single mothers drawing public assistance to physicians to medical students.
In Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, the U.S. “Supreme Court said we couldn’t use race as a way for our school system to desegregate. Our school’s new formula looks at economic segregation. It tries to have goals for every school—for people from lower incomes and higher incomes,” he said. “From our city perspective we realize we do have a role to play through our planning and zoning process.”
Louisville still has a long way to go, Mr. Poynter said. The 770,000-resident area remains segregated in many ways. But the county ranked in the top third of the Brookings report—meaning about two-thirds of the areas ranked by the report had larger test-score gaps.
“When we put our resources and our time and our talent into things, we can really move the needle,” he added.
Seeking a Balance
But as in the case of Louisville, new developments may only affect individual neighborhoods and influence the economic make-up of a few schools.
“The metro areas where exclusionary zoning is low still have many cities in which some neighborhoods are dominated by rental apartments and others by high-priced, single-family detached houses,” said Mr. Pendall, of the Urban Institute. “Those where exclusionary zoning is high have many towns ... where it’s difficult or impossible to build any apartments at all, in any neighborhood. This kind of metropolitan area doesn’t work as well as one in which jurisdictions or school districts have more mixed housing.”
School boards have found some ways to circumvent long-established living patterns, an issue they have struggled with since schools were required to be desegregated almost 60 years ago. Complex patterns of busing students emerged, magnet schools were created, and some districts have eliminated school boundaries based on geography.
In the Lee County, Fla., school district, listed in Mr. Rothwell’s report as the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area, school officials created a system of school choice more than a decade ago to settle a desegregation lawsuit.
The 83,000-student district, where about 70 percent of students are poor, had one of the smallest test-score gaps between low- and higher-income students in the Brookings report.
The county is divided into three zones, and parents can choose among the schools in their zone. Each area has specialty programs, including International Baccalaureate and arts schools, district spokesman Joe Donzelli said.
The county, on Florida’s southwestern coast, includes exclusive island resort towns and low-income inland areas.
“It doesn’t matter what side of the tracks you live on: You have the same chance to go to that school whether you live on the wealthy side of the county or the lower-income side of the county,” Mr. Donzelli said.
Although the district reached unitary status—escaping its federal court-ordered desegregation—years ago, abandoning the choice system isn’t really an option. The district would quickly revert to a pattern of segregated schools, so the extra transportation costs are worth it, according to Mr. Donzelli.
However, while Mr. Rothwell said his study and others are evidence that low-income students benefit from attending high-scoring schools, there is no guarantee that this factor by itself will have an effect on students’ educational achievement, said Reginald Felton, the assistant executive director for congressional relations for the National School Boards Association in Alexandria, Va.
“Increasing access to suburban areas or to wealthy neighborhoods in urban areas alone will not necessarily significantly improve performance by low-income students or racial and ethnic minority students,” he said. “Additional support systems from the school as well as the community are necessary to create and sustain ‘positive learning environments’.”
In addition, though school boards can do little beyond share their opinions with municipal government leaders on zoning decisions to affect how cities develop, he said, all schools need to have high expectations and quality instruction.
Other places that did relatively well in Mr. Rothwell’s rankings include the Seattle area and the Portland, Ore. area. Portland created policies that limit sprawl and the development of wealthy suburban enclaves, Mr. Rothwell said.
And Seattle appears to be following Mr. Felton’s suggested playbook: The district’s old school-assignment plan was struck down in the same Supreme Court ruling that affected Louisville. The district had a choice model in which students could attend any school in the district but some people believe it favored families who had the time and motivation to research the best options for their children. Lower-income families and those who weren’t native English-speakers had a harder time navigating it.
The 48,500-student district, where about 41 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals, has now abandoned the choice plan and is instead focused on improving the quality of every school, spokeswoman Teresa Wippel said.
“We are also looking at what is working at schools where students in the past have struggled,” Ms. Wippel said, “with the goal of replicating that whenever possible.”
Vol. 31, Issue 29