Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

A common storyline with regard to the housing search process is that searchers pay close attention to the available local schools in making decisions. There is evidence that this is true for many families who make housing decisions directly tied to gaining access to a specific school or district (Lareau & Goyette 2014). However, questions have emerged about the home-school decision link with some research showing an almost nonexistent link for poor families whose housing choices are severely limited (Rhodes & DeLuca 2014). Other research on mostly white middle/upper-middle class families in large cities suggests a “loosening” of the linkage in recent years as policies enable parents to select public schools outside local catchment zones. Relatedly, there have been calls for focusing on housing search and selection processes to understand the drivers of racial residential segregation (Crowder & Krysan 2016). In this paper we heed that call by analyzing 146 in-depth interviews focused on how white, black and Latino parents of school-aged children in six working class neighborhoods in Chicago made decisions about where to live and send their children to school. The majority of parents were working class, but the sample also included middle and lower income parents.

We find that schools and housing are linked decisions for only a small minority of our sample, while they are de-linked for the vast majority. The manner by which the decisions are de-linked varies. One-half of the de-linked parents prioritized housing and neighborhood qualities over schools: they were not ignoring schools, but just not using housing to secure their child’s academic futures. Instead, they either assumed the neighborhood school would suffice or they briefly researched nearby schools to confirm acceptability. Other de-linking parents could ignore neighborhood schools because they already planned to use the public school choice system or send their children to private schools. Most of the working and middle class fell into these two categories. By contrast, low-income parents had de-linked decisions because their housing was not a ‘choice,’ as they made emergency moves or had to move in with relatives.

Our analysis questions existing theories of housing-school choice and the role of school choice policy in these decisions. First, the housing/school connection is more complicated than assumed, particularly in complex school policy contexts. We highlight the shortcomings of applying middle-class models to other populations who, while not as constrained as very low income families, have housing challenges. Second, in contrast to a typical picture of how school “choice” operates, only a small proportion of respondents engaged in de-linked housing/school decisions because of the “freedom” that school choice provided. Instead, they were not in the school choice “market” at all – either because they knew little about the “choices” available, or felt the local school would be fine. Others tried to enter the school choice market but were unsuccessful. Close inspection of the process by which these de-linked decisions unfold reveals complexity and constraint that calls into question whether school choice policy is operating as intended.