The Educational Legacy of Redlining

Research Minutes podcast

In the wake of the Great Depression, neighborhoods across the U.S. were assigned "mortgage security" grades, which lenders would use to provide or deny home loans to residents. Those grades, which disproportionately harmed communities of color, may still be impacting schools and students nearly a century later, according to a new working paper by Harvard University researchers Dylan Lukes and Christopher Cleveland. Lukes and Cleveland join CPRE Knowledge Hub managing editor Keith Heumiller to discuss their research, which found that schools located in historically redlined neighborhoods have lower district-level per-pupil revenues, less diverse student populations, and worse average test scores than those in higher-graded neighborhoods. They also discuss some key takeaways for policymakers, districts, education researchers and other stakeholders across the U.S.