Chapter 14: Disrupting Spaces Education Policymaking

Federal, state, and local housing policies enacted early in the 20th century that allowed for legal housing discrimination, including such practices as redlining and refusal to sell homes to Black families in certain neighborhoods, continue to play critical roles in the racial segregation that exists in today’s neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, housing segregation has a direct impact on school segregation, as where one lives determines the available educational opportunities. This “geography of opportunity” (de Souza Briggs, 2005; Tate, 2008) is highly racialized as Black and Latino children are more likely to attend schools that are racially and economically segregated, and have inadequate resources, inexperienced teachers, and a less challenging curricula (Orfield, Kucsera, & Siegel-Hawley, 2012; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005; Rumberger & Palardy, 2005). This is particularly true in urban areas that face numerous academic challenges, but are also susceptible to the school reform policy du jour: school closures. Indeed, school closures are occurring in urban cities such as Chicago, Illinois; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; and Oakland, California, where the majority of students affected by the closures are Black and Latino. In 2013, the city of Chicago’s appointed Board of Education voted to close 50 schools, which were predominately Black and Latino, representing the largest number of school closures to occur in U.S. history (Lipman, Vaughan, & Gutierrez, 2014).