Why housing and education leaders must work together to help students thrive – EdSource

Education and Housing: Bridging the Gap for Sustainable Development

School officials said they are currently working on dealing with the wave of new students coming from the Villages of Patterson development under construction. School officials and community members and school officials worry that the schools will not be able to handle another large-scale wave of development without a mitigation agreement.

Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource

Education and housing are often inextricably linked, but policy decisions made in the two sectors are generally siloed, at times shaped and passed without considering how a housing policy might impact education and vice versa.

Research on Housing and Education Collaboration for Sustainable Development

Megan Gallagher’s research bridges the two, focusing on housing and educational collaborations that support students’ academic outcomes. Some of her latest work as a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization focused on public policy, provides school officials and housing developers with ideas on how to partner together to desegregate schools by desegregating neighborhoods.

Key Housing Characteristics Impacting Children’s Educational Outcomes

• Housing quality
• Housing affordability
• Housing stability
• Neighborhood quality
• Housing that builds wealth

In this Q&A, Gallagher details why those housing characteristics matter in a child’s education and the collaborations that can help children have a fair chance at achieving academic success. The interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Understanding the Impact of Housing Policy on Education

How does housing policy impact children’s educational outcomes?

It’s really important when we try to understand the influence that housing has on kids’ educational outcomes, that (we look at) its unique contribution.

You could have families with the same income levels, (but) one is in a high-quality house and one is in a low-quality house. A low-quality house can influence a child’s health, ability to sleep, and feeling safe. And so, you could have a very different outcome for that child if they are in a lower-quality home.

The Importance of Housing Characteristics in Education

You have outlined five characteristics of housing that have an impact on children’s educational outcomes. Why are those five characteristics so important?

Those five characteristics have been studied a decent amount in housing policy literature. I didn’t conduct all the original research that went into these findings, I just sort of pulled it all together into one place. It is possible that there are aspects of housing that have not been measured historically that could also have an influence on education.

We know that low-quality housing — housing that has mold or electrical issues — is associated with lower kindergarten readiness scores. That causal relationship has been established. The relationship between spending too much on rent is connected to increased behavioral problems. Housing instability, and I would really put homelessness and housing insecurity into the housing instability bucket, really affects school stability and then has an effect on math and reading scores. We know that successful homeownership, so homeownership that allows families to build equity, increases the likelihood of attending college. We also know that neighborhood context, like violence, can disrupt academic progress and prevent children from succeeding in school.

So there is evidence that connects each one of these housing conditions to a variety of aspects of kids’ well-being and educational outcomes.

One of the things that we have not really done a very good job on is which of these aspects of housing matter the most or have the most influence. If we have a million dollars, what would we want to put that million dollars on to improve educational outcomes? I don’t think we have enough evidence right now to know exactly what would be the right pathway for that.

The Interplay of Housing Characteristics for Educational Success

Do all five characteristics need to be in place for children to have the best possible educational outcomes?

There’s not enough data right now for us to understand which of the five need to be in place or what the likelihood of succeeding is if you have one or two or three or four of them in place.

This is an area where we continue to need more understanding, more evidence, but I don’t think that we can wait to make policy decisions until we have all of that evidence.

The Disconnect between Housing and Education Policy

Is the lack of sufficient research one of the outcomes of the disconnect between housing and education policy?

Absolutely. I think the sectors are so siloed, many of the giant data collection investments that have happened at HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) or at the U.S. Department of Education have not had data elements that capture aspects of the other sector.

When we are looking at housing data in housing policy, there hasn’t been really detailed data collected about the children in the family — which schools they attend and how they’re doing — which could potentially allow data to be connected, likewise in the education world.

We run into lots of challenges in research with privacy where just because you can connect data, should you? Is that what program participants have agreed to when they’ve decided to enroll their children in public school or when they’ve decided to enroll in a housing subsidy program? In a lot of cases, the answer is no.

Some of the best data is really connected at the local level, where you have local policymakers that are working with local agencies that have asked permission and are connecting data to kind of fine-tune programs on the ground.

Building an Inclusive Education System

How do we reach a point where we have the information necessary to ensure academic success for all children?

It has to happen at multiple levels. The federal government needs to encourage the Department of Ed and HUD to collaborate and to really support or incentivize collaboration in their discretionary grant programs. I really see it as the feds have an opportunity to lead and really support this kind of work.

But I also think that there are so many local organizations that are leading. I think a lot of the case study work that I have done can help to illustrate how flexibility and collaboration can really translate into a set of programs or practices that support kids’ education and stable, high-quality housing.

I know that philanthropy is really supporting a lot of exploration around sector alignment.

I feel really hopeful about this sort of broader vision for how we create policy that thinks about the way that multiple systems can influence how well a child is doing. But I also think that it’s not like there’s just all of this housing sitting there and kids are not living in it. A big part of this work is making sure that there continues to be a housing production pipeline that is developing housing to ensure that there’s enough housing at various price points so that everybody has the opportunity to live where they’d like to live.

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

• SDG 4: Quality Education
• SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

The article discusses the impact of housing on children’s educational outcomes, highlighting the connection between education and housing policies. This aligns with SDG 4, which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all. Additionally, the article emphasizes the importance of housing characteristics, such as quality, affordability, stability, and neighborhood context, which are relevant to SDG 11’s goal of creating sustainable cities and communities.

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

• Target 4.a: Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability, and gender-sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive, and effective learning environments for all.
• Target 11.1: By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe, and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums.
• Target 11.3: By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated, and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.

The article emphasizes the importance of housing quality and its impact on children’s educational outcomes, which aligns with Target 4.a. Additionally, the article highlights the need for adequate, safe, and affordable housing, which is relevant to Target 11.1. The discussion of the impact of neighborhood context on academic progress and the need for integrated and sustainable human settlement planning aligns with Target 11.3.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

• Indicator 4.a.1: Proportion of schools with access to electricity, internet, computers, and basic drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene services.
• Indicator 11.1.1: Proportion of urban population living in slums, informal settlements, or inadequate housing.
• Indicator 11.3.1: Ratio of land consumption rate to population growth rate.

The article does not explicitly mention indicators, but based on the identified targets, the following indicators can be used to measure progress:
– Indicator 4.a.1 can be used to assess the availability of basic facilities in schools, which is relevant to Target 4.a.
– Indicator 11.1.1 can be used to measure the proportion of the urban population living in inadequate housing, which aligns with Target 11.1.
– Indicator 11.3.1 can be used to evaluate the sustainability of urbanization and land use planning, which relates to Target 11.3.

4. Table: SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

Source: edsource.org