The landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed explicit segregation in public schools, making desegregation a defining achievement of the civil rights era. Yet a new study – recently presented during an event at the USC Price School of Public Policy – argues that another set of local rules help preserve separation by race and income long after “Whites Only” schools disappeared.
Zoning and land use policy, which govern the kinds of homes that can be built and where, influence where families of different incomes can live. That sorts – and effectively segregates – children across schools, according to University of California (UC), Riverside, Assistant Professor Stan Oklobdzija.
“We have a persistent problem with school segregation in the United States, and we’re not thinking enough about how zoning and land use policy may be affecting them,” Oklobdzija said.
Oklobdzija, who shared an early look at his research at an event hosted by the Political Institutions and Political Economy (PIPE) Collaborative, examined 27 million residential parcels within 923 school districts and 13,002 school attendance zones. He co-authored the paper with UC Irvine Associate Professor Nicholas Marantz and UC Berkeley Associate Professor Carolina Reid.
Oklobdzija and his colleagues found that districts where single-family and multifamily homes were distributed unevenly among attendance zones – the geographic boundaries that determine which public school a child is assigned – are more segregated by race and income. Attendance zones with larger shares of detached single-family homes enrolled disproportionately more white and Asian students than their districts overall.
The PIPE Collaborative program, which is directed by USC Price School Provost Professor Jeffery Jenkins, is a university-wide research project that brings together faculty and students interested in political economy. The PIPE workshops give USC students an inside look at how academics produce, present and collaborate on their research. Students and faculty get the chance to ask questions and identify shortcomings in the authors’ papers.
“What Jeff does here with PIPE is fantastic,” Oklobdzija said. “It’s a really, really big resource for our region to come here, get this sort of feedback, meet other people, build this network.”
PIPE, which has hosted more than 100 presentations, is now in its 10th year. The program is preparing to host its third annual Historical Political Economy Conference on Oct. 16, where scholars workshop papers on topics ranging from economic development and historical legacies to colonialism and globalism.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to organize the PIPE Collaborative,” Jenkins said. “A regular workshop and conferences on important topics are so vital to the life of a top research university. Many thanks to my colleagues from inside and outside the Price School who invest their time in PIPE’s success. And special thanks to Dean Boone for continuing to support the endeavor.”
