Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools: Residential Segregation and the Search for a Good School

Chapter 5. Residential Mobility and School Choice Among Poor Families

137   Chapter 5   Residential Mobility and School Choice Among Poor Families Anna Rhodes and Stefanie DeLuca T he number of school choice options for urban parents has exploded over the last two decades with the growth of intradistrict choice plans, school choice vouchers, magnet, and charter schools. How­ ever, despite expanding options for urban schooling, more than 70 per­cent of children in public school attend the one zoned for their neighborhood, making residential decisions consequential for children’s development and educational attainment (U.S. Department of Education 2009). Given the strong link between residential location and school attendance, recent research has explored how school choices affect residential decisions, and finds that this connection factors strongly in the minds of middle-class parents. Many middle-class families move out of urban areas when their children are of school age, in anticipation of sending them to higher-quality schools outside of the city. Parents often purchase homes in neighborhoods because of the reputation of the local schools (Holme 2002).Annette Lareau (see chapter 6, this volume) finds that, among both working-class and middle- or upper-class families who moved to suburban neighborhoods, the reputation of neighborhood schools is a significant driver of their resi­ dential decisions. This research demonstrates how residential and school decisions interact for some American households, but these samples do not include the poorest families, those for whom a calculated move to the suburbs is unaffordable. How do these school and housing choice pro­ cesses operate for low-income families who face significant economic constraints? Do they connect their residential and school decisions in the same manner observed among higher income families? Which fac­ tors enter into the decisions about where to live and where to send their children to school? 138    Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools Using longitudinal qualitative data from low-incomeAfricanAmerican families in Mobile, Alabama, we examine the interplay between resi­ dential trajectories and school choice, and describe the family circum­ stances, motivations, and structural factors that lead families to select, or in some cases end up in, their residential contexts and schools. In line with previous work, we find that the poor families in our study move frequently, and that their children change schools repeatedly (Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin 2004). However, we find that because residential moves for low-income families often involve unplanned and distressed searches for hard-to-find housing, families try to meet basic needs such as safety, proximity to child care, and housing unit qualities rather than focusing on schools. In fact, we find that residential decisions are almost never driven by school considerations, standing in stark contrast to research that shows a clear connection between residential choice and school considerations for middle-class, white families (Holme 2002), and decades of research on residential mobility that assumes such amenities factor prominently in the housing choice process for all families (Rossi 1980; Speare, Goldstein, and Frey 1975; Clark, Deurloo, and Dieleman 2006; for further detail on residential mobility research, see chapters 1 and 2, this volume). We find that poor families decouple their housing and school choices for several reasons. First, it seems that calculated school choices lose out in the highly constrained residential choice process. Second, the inability of these poor families to escape the disadvantaged neighborhoods of Mobile through their residential moves narrows their school experiences to a lim­ ited subset of highly segregated and lower performing schools. Although these families rely on their social networks for assistance in choosing schools, these friends and family members often possess information about the same schools, and do not expand the choice set of schools to be considered. This limited information is one reason that children are rarely enrolled in schools outside Mobile’s poor and racially segre­ gated residential areas. The lack of variation in information and experi­ ence with schools leads many parents to assume that all schools are quite similar, and this also diminishes the importance of schools as a driving factor in residential choices. Although school considerations are not a major determinant of resi­ dential choices, just like middle-class parents, poor parents are eager to keep their children in safe and positive school environments where they can succeed. Because these families do not use residential mobility as a vehicle to exercise school choice, parents who want to change their child’s school generally rely on the addresses of family and friends to enroll their child in a school zoned for a different neighborhood. These school deci­ sions...