Exogenous Policy, Racial Avoidance, and the Qualified Relevance of Macroeconomic Change to Metropolitan Inequality

Abstract

Context: The rich contextualization of educational processes brought about in the pioneering work of Jean Anyon pushed scientists to acknowledge that the education being provided to the least advantaged was shaped by factors with origins beyond school and family environments. Political economic work in education has subsequently argued that an unforgiving economy has lessened the educational fortunes of urban residents. Focus of Study: In response to claims that macroeconomic change created the confinement of educational disadvantage, this article reveals that political economic arguments predicated on macroeconomic change have yet to explain a period of decline on several dimensions of educational inequality from 1970 to 1990. Research Design: Through a juxtaposition of historical population trends and research with the ideas of Anyon and her contemporaries, this analysis considers racial forces emanating from desegregation policy as key to understanding test-score trends and metropolitan restructuring. Descriptive analyses of test-score trends and neighborhood indices of dissimilarities from 1970 to the mid-1990s form the basis of analysis. Conclusions: The analysis demonstrates that not only does desegregation policy align with anomalous educational trends, but that its impact reverberated to other spatial strata through its encouragement of Whites’ school selection decisions intent on racial avoidance. Racial avoidance should therefore be considered as an architect of the racial and economic landscape of the modern metropolis.