Research
Book Project: School Consolidation in the Unequal City: How Race and Class Shape Efforts to Change Urban Education
School segregation is a fundamental feature of American education. Although efforts to integrate schools reached their peak in the 1960s and 1970s, in the 21st century there has been little political appetite to combat the issue. This book examines an atypical example of contemporary school integration. I trace the complex story behind the consolidation of two adjacent neighborhood elementary schools in Chicago: one that is plurality white and has a small share of low income students and the other that is predominantly Black and low income. I use this case to explore questions of race, power, and justice. In doing so, I draw on 116 interviews with 96 respondents, 90 hours of participant observation, document analysis, and archival research. I demonstrate how the politics of race and class played into all aspects of the consolidation: the origins, resistance to, and then ultimate pursuit of the idea by a committed group of parents and community members. I follow this group’s efforts, highlighting the non-confrontational tactics they use to convince the school district to change the institutional status quo and consolidate the schools. I argue that once the consolidated school opens, familiar tensions arise around race, power, and building community. Finally, I step back to reconsider and reframe the consolidation story. I argue that the question of consolidation was the wrong one overall, and instead suggest a more radical approach centering racial justice for Black students and their families. I end by using my radical imaginary to put forth ways that this kind of justice could be achieved. My findings contribute to the broader understanding of the ways in which race and class shape American education and advance our conversation about the meaning of racial justice.
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
Cuddy, Maximilian, Maria Krysan, and Amanda Lewis. 2020. “ Choosing homes without choosing schools? How urban parents navigate decisions about neighborhoods and school choice.” Journal of Urban Affairs 42(8):1180-1201.
While many assume that families engaged in a housing search decide where to live at least in part based on the schools, there is surprisingly little research on how schools actually matter in the residential decision-making process. Drawing on interviews with a socioeconomically diverse sample of 110 parents in Chicago, we explore the connection between housing and schools. For the vast majority of our sample, schools did not loom large during their housing search. Instead, working families are faced with a range of competing demands and constraints making the housing search so challenging that even families who factor in schooling do so in ways that are neither direct nor straightforward. We conclude that while some past research suggests that urban school choice facilitates the decoupling of housing and school decisions, our data show that the “freedom” that derives from school choice can be more imaginary than real for many families.
Book Chapters
In this chapter we provide an overview of core theoretical debates related to the persistence of residential segregation by race. We begin the chapter with an overview of the three theoretical traditions informing research on the topic and provide a basic outline of the evidence related to these arguments. While these traditional arguments have dominated the study of residential segregation for decades, they each suffer from a weak engagement with insights into how people search for housing. Accordingly, we also offer an overview of more contemporary theoretical frames that explicitly conceive of segregation as emerging from stratified housing searches and underlying social dynamics. We illustrate these efforts by exploring the diverse effects of one social realm—family—on housing searches and segregation. Rather than providing an exhaustive treatment of prevailing theoretical arguments, the chapter highlights opportunities for housing scholars to further conceptualize housing search processes as a crucial lens through which discrimination, economic stratification, and more subtle social processes shape residential outcomes.
Drawing on a new framework related to housing search processes and a 2015 study examining the nexus of school and housing choices by residents of working-class neighborhoods in Chicago, in this chapter we illustrate how features of housing and school choice processes—and the policies that rely on them—set the stage for individual choices that serve to perpetuate segregation. We close with observations about how these policies—with concerted effort—could be adapted or implemented in a way that creates opportunities to promote integration instead of segregation.
Research Reports
This report examines the racial wealth gap among middle class families living in Cook County. Drawing on 99 interviews with white, Black, and Latinx middle class parents with children, we demonstrate the interconnected mechanisms that drive the racial wealth gap. Even though our respondents had similar levels of education, income, and occupations, white families were still more likely to be financially stable than Black or Latinx families. We find that differential access to family resources lies at the heart of this story. White families both receive far more support from family members and are called on far less to provide support to their extended family. This results in White families generally having far more assets and far less debt than Black and Latinx families, even when they have similar levels of education and income. White parents and grandparents were able to give substantial financial support and transformative assets to our White respondents — both in the past and continuing into the present. The effect was not only to augment White families’ financial positions and their wealth-building capacities, but also to increase their peace of mind. The Black and Latinx respondents we interviewed generally did not have access to the same kinds of financial support, and furthermore, in many cases are serving as the source of financial support for their wider family networks as their extended families call on them for help. In different ways, these intergenerational transfers, moving in both directions, are a key mechanism of the racial wealth gap.