Lily Steyer

Increasing access to equitable educational opportunities: It has been widely documented that households of higher socioeconomic status (SES) prefer homes outside of lower income neighborhoods, in part because of the belief that lower income neighborhoods are served by lower quality schools. However, the expansion of various forms of school choice, which allow children to attend school outside their neighborhoods, have raised important, unanswered questions about the unintended consequences of these policies for residential sorting patterns, especially in historically disinvested neighborhoods. In partnership with San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) we are exploring how low-income, historically disinvested neighborhoods change when school choice policies sever the link between children's neighborhoods of residence and the schools they attend.