How school boundaries and feeder patterns shape DC’s housing and education inequalities

This article is part of a limited series exploring the history, current policies, and intersections between school boundaries and feeder patterns in DC’s public schools and land use, housing, and transportation issues. Read Part I, Part III, and Part IV. And then learn more by tuning into the series’ companion webinar, moderated by journalist Abigail Higgins.

Every winter, parents cluster in the online forums of DC Urban Moms and Dads to strategize ways to game DC’s public school system. For many in this group of parents, this means landing a spot at one of the city’s top-performing schools, located overwhelmingly in the city’s northwest quadrant. Schools in the city’s predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods in the east and south of the city are rarely, if ever, mentioned.

A study of this elite maneuvering was published in a Brookings Center report last year, which analyzed a decade of exchanges on the forum and found that 13% of the conversations were about housing. A primary strategy promoted by parents was renting or purchasing a home — in some cases, a second home — within their desired school’s boundaries, typically in neighborhoods where homes go for, on average, well over $1 million.

The research confirmed what many already knew: housing inequality and education inequality in Washington, DC, are deeply intertwined and school boundaries (the lines that determine where a child gets a guaranteed public school spot based on their address) are a key to perpetuating this inequality.

“School boundaries are one of the ways that otherwise self-styled progressive or tolerant people are comfortable with segregation because they perceive school boundaries as a sort of promise that they will have access to a certain public good,” said Dan Reed, an urban planner and education expert in Montgomery County, Maryland (Disclaimer: Dan is also GGWash’s regional policy director). “Your address basically ends up being a private amenity that people pay a lot of money to have exclusive access to.”

Indeed, the Brookings report found that: “School assignment is often treated as a high-stakes, zero-sum game, with clear winners and losers.” One commenter reportedly wrote of the beginning of school assignment season in DC: “Let the Hunger Games BEGINNNNNN!”

In addition to school boundaries, DC’s feeder patterns—the fact that a student who graduates from a particular elementary school then has a guaranteed spot at the middle and high school it feeds into—means that some parents start gaming out school attendance a decade in advance.

Perhaps needless to say, in a city with some of the highest income inequality in the country, and a particularly stark disparity between Black and white residents (At $141,650, the median income for white households is more than three times that of Black households at $45,072), this is not how most families navigate school choice. Homeownership is lowest amongst the city’s Black residents and where it does exist, it is heavily clustered in the city’s east and south. There is a $156,000 gap between the median home value of white and Black homeowners in the city.

Washington, DC, is among the most segregated cities in the country and its school boundaries reflect this. Like most cities in America, according to research by the Urban Institute, DC’s school boundaries reflect historic redlining maps and divide students not only by race but by resources, with white schools experiencing better test scores, more teachers, and better facilities.

The city’s school boundaries were last redrawn during a heated and controversial process in 2014. Prior to that, they had not changed since 1968. Under an act introduced by at-large Councilmember Christina Henderson in January, the Attendance Zone Boundaries Amendment Act of 2022, redistricting would occur every ten years (due next in 2024).

“I am bracing myself for a very ugly conversation because it brings out the ugly in people when you talk about education, housing, diversity, and ownership,” said Henderson. “Which is strange because we’re in a progressive city, right? People say they like diversity but when you start having these conversations, there are limits to how much diversity works for you.”

Some discussions on DC Urban Moms and Dads reflect this. When Crestwood, a neighborhood in Northwest DC, was going to be redistricted out of the desirable Alice Deal Middle School feeder pattern, one commenter said: “We bought in Crestwood with the expectation that deal [sic] would be available to us.”

“There’s this feeling of ownership over a seat because you purchased a house in a particular area,” said Henderson. “‘I bought into the school’ — No, you bought a house, your house hasn’t changed but the lines can change.”

Experts say these attitudes have also led to opposition to affordable housing or apartment building construction, with families fearing that an influx of new residents could lead to redistricting.

“These two battles basically just reinforce each other,” said Reed. “People don’t want different types of homes in their neighborhoods so they entrench socioeconomic and racial segregation which, in turn, means that schools are increasingly segregated and have more disparate and unequal outcomes, which creates another disincentive to change school boundaries.”

These education problems created by the city’s housing segregation are, by some accounts, a problem the public school’s lottery system could fix.

DC has about 100,000 public school students and each year some 25,000 families rank their top 12 choices to participate in the My School DC lottery. In the end, about 46% of the city’s public school students will land in charter schools (DC has some of the densest concentrations of these largely publicly funded but privately managed schools in the country) and 54% will land in traditional public schools, either in their neighborhood school or in an out-of-boundary school they got through the lottery.

But unfortunately, implementation holds more weight than intention and, so far, the lottery system is only making an unequal system worse. While economic diversity is increasing somewhat, racial and ethnic diversity is stubbornly stagnant.

DC’s “at-risk” students — who make up a shocking 45% of the public school system because they’re homeless, in foster care, their parents receive cash or food assistance from the government, or they’re overage in high school — are less likely to use the lottery system. This is partially because the time required to effectively research some 250 schools while also attending in-person visits and education fairs can be inaccessible to parents who might be single, juggling multiple jobs, or non-native English speakers — among other complications.

At-risk kids are also less likely to get into their lottery choices. A major reason is that the lottery gives preference to siblings, according to research by the D.C. Policy Center, which tends to maintain school demographics rather than disrupt them.

A 2020 report released by the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor also found that parents who decide not to send their kids to their neighborhood school generally chose schools that have a smaller number of at-risk kids, making wait lists (which are predominantly filled by socioeconomically advantaged families) impenetrably long at the city’s most popular and resourced schools. DCPS did not respond to multiple interview requests.

“School choice does not alleviate this problem of segregation. There’s clear evidence that parent’s preferences also align with segregation,” said Tomás E. Monarrez, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute and one of the authors of their research on school boundaries and redlining.

This reality is why some advocates point out that leaving educational equity up to individual choice — or more accurately, to those who are economically advantaged enough to have choice — is a way for the government to punt responsibility for creating an egalitarian system; one where children’s education is a game that everyone wins, not a select few.

This article is part of a limited series made possible with a grant from Education Forward DC. Greater Greater Washington’s editorial department maintains editorial control and independence in accordance with our editorial policy. Our journalists follow the ethics guidelines of the Society of Professional Journalists.