Research from Johns Hopkins 21st Century Cities Initiative Identifies Housing and Transportation Policies Needed to Address School Segregation in Baltimore City Public Schools

By Julie Walker, NLIHC Project Manager, Opportunity Starts at Home

The Johns Hopkins 21st Century Cities Initiative, a hub for interdisciplinary research on urban experiences in Baltimore and worldwide, released a new report analyzing racial segregation patterns within and between Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) and other schools in the Baltimore region. The report finds that school segregation Baltimore is due to regional housing segregation, and cross-sector strategies that foster racial and economic integration across jurisdictions are necessary to reduce racial segregation. The report’s authors identify housing and transportation policies required for meaningful outcomes.  

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a 10-year statewide education reform law, identifies increasing educational opportunities and equitable access to opportunities as priorities. Studies consistently find that segregation creates resource inequalities and makes equal educational opportunities more difficult to achieve. Further, prior research on segregation in Baltimore has shown that racial and economic diversity increases student success. The report provides an overview of the historical and contemporary context of segregation to understand contemporary patterns and challenges to addressing school segregation and identifies where people move as the process that maintains segregation today.  

The authors use data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates, segregation measures from The Segregation Tracking Project at Stanford University, and data from the 2024 Baltimore Area Survey (BAS). The BAS found that Baltimore-area residents overwhelmingly consider racial integration to be very important. Analysis of the racial composition of city schools finds that 75.4% of city schools students are Black, 10% are Hispanic, and 9% are white. Baltimore residents age 0-19, in comparison, are 66% Black, 11% Hispanic, and 17% white. Differences between enrollment and population indicate that some racial segregation in schools can be explained by a disproportionate number of white children enrolled in private schools outside of city schools.  

To gauge levels of segregation, the authors looked at measures of exposure or isolation to assess the make-up of a school’s composition within a larger geography, and measures of unevenness that consider how well an individual school’s demographic composition reflects that of the overall district. City schools were found to be generally less segregated compared to the Baltimore Metro region and the state of Maryland.  

Middle- and high-school students in city schools often have the option to choose schools outside of their home school district through a ranked-choice lottery. While choice in school enrollment promotes school integration by de-coupling school assignments from segregated residential patterns, these options are often undermined by social and transportation barriers. As a result, addressing racial segregation will require strategies that create opportunities across district boundaries, through cross-sector solutions that address housing and transportation barriers alongside education policies.  

The report’s authors highlight housing and transportation policies that would promote increased school integration in Baltimore. Providing Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs) is the most direct, beneficial, and immediate way to help families with low incomes access housing. When paired with counseling to help participants find homes in neighborhoods of their choice, HCVs are a cost-effective way to reduce racial segregation across schools. Along with an increase in HCVs, policies like inclusionary zoning are needed to increase the housing supply available to families with low incomes in areas with the highest housing costs. Importantly, mixed-income development is needed outside of Baltimore City since school racial segregation is higher in surrounding regions. Subsidies to incentivize housing development are recommended in lower-cost areas of the region, and the authors highlight tax credits, Community Land Trusts (CLTs), and affordable housing trust funds as effective policy options.  

Improving regional transportation options must also be considered when developing more equitable housing opportunities, and regional cooperation between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. could help to solve housing problems in different parts of the state. Improved regional transportation could supplement housing supply for the D.C. workforce and help to overcome declining population in Baltimore. Along with supporting increased residential and school integration, state commitment to regional transportation improvements may keep more residents in Maryland in the long term and foster new economic development opportunities. 

Read the report. 

To learn more about the connections between housing and racial equity, read the OSAH fact sheet.