Ensuring Equal Access to Modernized Public School Facilities
A federal reform to reverse the effects of historical housing discrimination.
Congress is considering authorizing $82 billion in new federal spending for K-12 public school infrastructure. The new funding would be available for public school districts to “repair, modernize, and rebuild crumbling and outdated school buildings.” But before Congress acts, policymakers should consider whether potential new funding (and existing aid for public school construction) is used to extend or reverse the discriminatory effects of 20th century housing redlining rules and residential-based school assignment. Current and future federal assistance for school construction and renovation should ensure that new and modernized public schools provide equal access to students regardless of where they live.
Background on public school assignment and housing discrimination
Over the past thirty years, state and local policymakers have reformed K-12 education by giving parents greater ability to choose their children’s schools through open enrollment, public charter schools, private school choice programs, and education savings accounts. But 70 percent of American elementary and secondary school students attend public schools that are assigned based on their residential location.
For the majority of American families with school-aged children, the quality of their child’s school and learning opportunity is directly linked with where they happen to live. This reality exacerbates socioeconomic inequality in K-12 education. Parents with greater financial means to choose where they live have a better ability to ensure that their child attends a safe and high-quality public school. According to the National Center for Education Statistics data, low-income parents are less likely to have considered other public schools or moved to their neighborhood for a public school than non-poor parents. Children from more affluent households are more likely to attend a K-12 school that was their parents’ first choice.
In most public school systems, public school assignment is determined by attendance boundary zones. Tim DeRoche, author of A Fine Line: How Most American Kids Are Kept Out of the Best Public Schools, explains how this practice undermines equal opportunity in K-12 education:
In nearly every city the pattern is the same: State law allows (or even requires) the district to draw attendance zones showing who gets to attend which schools. Districts use the lines to determine who can enroll in these elite, high-performing public schools. Young families respond to the policies by cramming into the coveted zone, driving up home prices. Other parents lie about their address to gain access. The divide between the two schools, often just blocks apart, grows over time.
In this way, access to high-quality public education is all too often determined based on access to housing, which is inevitably linked to household wealth and socioeconomic status.
A closer look at the history of American housing policy reveals that discriminatory federal policies that date back to the 1930s exacerbated racial segregation and limited upward economic mobility for generations of black Ameicans. For example, the Federal Housing Administration, which was created by the Franklin Roosevelt administration, would not insure mortgages for houses for black Americans or white Americans living in predominantly black neighborhoods. These practices were described as redlining.
Richard Rothstein, the author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, recently testified before the Senate Banking Committee about how these and related policies have undermined equal opportunity for generations:
Policies such as redlining, mandated racially restrictive covenants, segregation in federal public housing, and other racially discriminatory housing policies prevented African Americans from buying homes outside of proscribed areas. While the Fair Housing Act of 1968 sought to prohibit discriminatory policies going forward, the government undertook no serious assessment or policy of restitution to address the decades of past harm, exclusion and discrimination caused by federal policies and practices. As a result, America’s contemporary housing, real estate, and environmental landscape has been layered atop an infrastructure created by decades of racially discriminatory housing practices and policies. Because, as a nation, we have never truly reckoned with or attempted to dismantle the structure created by past discriminatory housing policies, segregation has been literally grandfathered into the developing American landscape decade after decade.
In contemporary K-12 education, the effects of past discriminatory housing practices and the traditional practice of assigning school attendance based on housing location has resulted in unequal access to high-quality public education.
Policy options for reversing the effects of redlining in K-12 education
Since the 1960s, the overarching goal of federal K-12 education laws and policies has been to promote equal opportunity and ensure that all children have access to a high-quality education. Progress has been made to reduce funding disparities between schools that serve rich and poor children and to ensure that at-risk student groups have equal opportunities to learn. But the widespread system of assigning children to attend public schools based on where they live continues to limit children’s educational opportunities based on their socioeconomic status and race.
Policymakers can increase equal opportunity in education by reforming public school assignment practices and by giving all parents greater power to choose their children’s schools and decide how their children are educated. For example, state and local policymakers should end the practice of using attendance boundary zones for public school assignment by establishing true open enrollment policies to allow parents to choose their children’s school and use lotteries to assign students when public schools are oversubscribed. State and local policymakers should also reform school funding and assignment policies to allow parents to control how their child’s share of public school funding is used and to choose the right learning environment.
These changes will generally require state and local policy reforms. They will also likely face significant stakeholder opposition. For example, reversing the current practice of assigning public school attendance based on residence will presumably face resistance from homeowners who live in zones with access to high-quality public school. Policies that give parents the ability to control education funding or choose options beyond their assigned public school will face strong opposition from public school teachers unions and other interest groups that prefer current public school funding and assignment systems.
These needed reforms will take time. But policymakers should consider incremental approaches to addressing the discriminatory practice of housing redlining and its implications for K-12 education. For federal policymakers, the current legislative debate about funding federal school construction and renovation presents such an opportunity.
The ‘Build Back Better’ plan
Decisions about renovating or constructing K-12 public schools have traditionally been matters left to the state and local level. However, the federal government has established policies that facilitate public school construction. The Congressional Research Service explains:
The federal government provides both indirect support for school construction (mainly by exempting from federal income taxation the interest on state and local governmental bonds used to finance school construction and renovation) and direct support via grants and loans. Few federal programs focus specifically on supporting school infrastructure. However, numerous federal programs provide financial support that may be used, at least to some extent, for school construction, renovation, or repair.
For example, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 included $22 billion in funding for federally subsidized bonds for school renovation and construction. This program was later modified to provide direct subsidies to school districts after states struggled to find buyers for school construction and renovation projects.
In 2021, Congress passed a $3.5 trillion budget resolution that provided instructions for House and Senate committees to authorize new federal spending through the reconciliation process. Congress took this action in response to the Biden Administration’s “Build Back Better” agenda. For its part, the House Education and Labor Committee passed legislation, which included $82 billion in new funding for school construction and renovation.
The Committee’s legislation specifically authorized a “Rebuild America’s Schools Grant Program,” which will distribute funding to state education agencies and local education agencies for the purpose of constructing or renovating public school buildings. The legislation distributes aid through existing federal education programs, including the Every Student Succeeds Act and Impact Aid, and sets rules for how states and local education agencies will use the funds.
The House Education and Labor Committee included language that aims to ensure that funding is used primarily to assist disadvantaged children, such as requiring that school districts applying to the state government for funds certify that the distinct will “prioritize the improvement of 16 the public school facilities of such agency that serve the highest numbers or percent18 ages of students who are eligible for a free or reduced price lunch.”
However, the House Education and Labor Committee’s “Build Back Better” legislation does not address how and whether new federal school funding will be used by public schools that base their student enrollment on attendance zones.
Short-term recommendations for congressional legislation and oversight
Congress could use the current legislative debate to begin to address the problem of state and public school districts assigning students based on residential boundary zones. Moreover, Congress could conduct oversight to better understand how or whether past and ongoing federal assistance for school construction and renovation interact with current state and local public school assignment practices.
The following are specific recommendations for congressional legislative reform and oversight.
- Congress should amend the current “Build Back Better” legislation’s provision for the “Rebuild America’s Schools Grant Program” to prohibit states and local education agencies from awarding funding for school construction or modernization to schools that do not allow open enrollment and allocate seats at oversubscribed schools by using a lottery.
- Congress should direct the Government Accountability Office or Department of Education Office of Inspector General to review the school assignment and open enrollment policies of school districts and public schools that have used federal assistance for school construction and renovation.
Both of these actions would begin to reverse the problematic effects of 20th century redlining practices in contemporary K-12 education. Ensuring that public schools constructed or modernized using federal funding assistance provide access to all children regardless of where they live would promote equal opportunity. Nonpartisan oversight would provide transparency about whether federal school construction and renovation assistance reinforces residential assignment in public education and inform whether additional federal, state, and local policy reforms are needed.
Modernized schools should have modernized admissions policies
Reversing the effects of past discriminatory housing practices and their troubling effect on contemporary K-12 public education in the United States should be a priority for federal, state, and local policymakers. In the long run, policymakers can promote equal opportunity by reforming the widespread practice of housing-based school assignment. Specifically, they should strengthen open enrollment options and reforming school funding rules to give parents greater control to decide how their children’s share of funds are used.
But the current legislative debate over the Biden administration’s “Build Back Better” program offers Congress an opportunity to require that public schools constructed or modernized by federal funds authorized in 2021 do not restrict their enrollment based on attendance boundary zones. This change would be a meaningful federal reform to begin to address the generational effects of housing-based discrimination caused by the federal government during the 20th century.
