The Neighborhood Unit: Schools, Segregation, and the Shaping of the Modern Metropolitan Landscape

In the first half of the 20th century, American policy makers at all levels of government, alongside housing and real estate industry figures, crafted mechanisms of racial exclusion that helped to segregate metropolitan residential landscapes. Although educators and historians have recognized the long-term consequences of these policies for the making of educational segregation, they have not yet fully perceived how strongly ideas about public schools mattered in the shaping of these exclusionary practices.

Erickson, Ansley T., and Andrew R. Highsmith. "The Neighborhood Unit: Schools, Segregation, and the Shaping of the Modern Metropolitan Landscape." Teachers College Record, Vol 120, No 3, (2018), 1-36.