By Tina Chelidze, Photo: Suzanne Tucker/Shutterstock, Housing Matters, July 11, 2023
Housing policy and education policy can reinforce each other’s outcomes. Housing policy shapes the neighborhoods where schools are and those schools' student demographics. Education policy affects the quality of schools and the resources available to students, which then can affect housing prices and zoning patterns. Nevertheless, these policy areas suffer from misalignment across funding, governance, and implementation.
One piece of this misalignment stems from inadequate data on how housing and education policy levers interact. Leveraging these data can help policymakers develop more effective strategies for improving outcomes for children and decreasing demographic and socioeconomic segregation. Using resources such as the Toolkit for Housing and Education Partnerships, housing practitioners can assist local school districts in navigating available data, identifying shared goals, and enhancing alignment to foster collaboration and address housing-related challenges effectively.
Last fall, the Urban Institute launched a peer-learning initiative with Bridges Collaborative and seven school districts across the country interested in Promoting Racial Equity in Schools by Understanding Segregation (PRESUNG). Many in the cohort were looking to address this data gap; they expressed the need for more localized, student-level information to adequately identify and target reforms.
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