Good Schools for Good Development: Race, Class, and Housing

Despite the impact of globalization, increased access to information, and improvements in technology, where one is born, grows up, and lives matters and has a significant impact on their future. Spatial inequalities resulting from urban development policies that encouraged white flight, redlining, and gentrification have led to economic segregation in housing patterns and what is in effect, a two-tiered structure for local schools in many urban regions. In the urban core, lower income, mostly minority students attend underfunded schools in high crime neighborhoods, and in the nearby suburbs, middle and upper income families have access to well-funded schools in lower crime areas. Education reformers seek to reduce these inequalities in outcomes by improving all students’ access to high-quality, high-performing schools, regardless of race, class, or home address. The focus of this chapter is to examine the interrelationships between schools, economic development, race, class, and housing.