Redlining in the Classroom: How Historical Housing Policies Still Shape Public Schools

In 1937, a Black family in Baltimore applied for a home loan in a neighborhood not far from where their children would attend school. The banker smiled politely, then stamped the paperwork with a silent verdict that would ripple through generations: “Hazardous—D.” That one letter, affixed by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), signified redlining—a government-sanctioned map of who was allowed to build wealth and who was barred from the American dream (Nelson et al., 2020). Decades later, their grandchildren still walk past underfunded schools, crumbling buildings, and over-policed hallways. Redlining didn’t just shape neighborhoods—it shaped classrooms.

The Legacy of the Map

Redlining maps weren’t merely suggestive—they were prescriptive. In city after city, the HOLC and the Federal Housing Administration coded neighborhoods based on race, immigrant presence, and perceived “stability” (Rothstein, 2017). Black neighborhoods were marked in red. Loans dried up. Investment vanished. And as white families fled to the suburbs with subsidized mortgages, Black families were boxed into zones deemed unworthy of growth.

Fast-forward to 2025, and the ghosts of those maps still walk the halls of American public schools. School district boundaries often mirror the redlined maps of the 1930s (Gross, 2021). Property taxes—local governments’ preferred funding source for education—remain tethered to land values. That means wealthier (once greenlined) neighborhoods fund lush schools with robotics labs and orchestra programs, while formerly redlined zones still struggle to fix their roofs or replace outdated textbooks. This is not just historical inertia; it is institutional continuity.

Case Study: Chicago

In Chicago, the link between redlining and educational inequality is glaring. A study by the University of Illinois-Chicago found that majority-Black neighborhoods rated “D” on historic HOLC maps still contain public schools receiving $5,000–$7,000 less per student annually than schools in historically “A” areas (Aaronson, Hartley & Mazumder, 2017). These schools also have higher teacher turnover rates, fewer advanced placement (AP) courses, and more overcrowded classrooms.

Take DuSable High School, located on the South Side in an area redlined in the 1930s. Compared to Lincoln Park High, in a historically greenlined zone, DuSable students face a 3-to-1 counselor-to-student ratio, fewer extracurriculars, and aging infrastructure. The message is clear: even if de jure segregation is gone, its shadow still casts unequal futures.

GIS Visuals as Receipts

Geographic Information System (GIS) technology has become a powerful witness to this legacy. Researchers and journalists have layered historic redlining maps over modern demographic data, school district boundaries, and tax assessments. The patterns reveal shocking overlaps: schools in formerly redlined zones are more likely to serve majority Black and Brown populations and far more likely to be underfunded (Mitchell & Franco, 2018).

For instance, a 2023 Urban Institute study using GIS in Baltimore showed that 90% of majority-Black schools located in previously redlined zones received fewer capital improvement dollars over a 10-year span than majority-white schools located in historically greenlined zones—even when enrollment was higher (Urban Institute, 2023). The data isn’t accidental. It is structural.

The Property Tax Trap

The most insidious way redlining endures is through property tax-based school funding. If your neighborhood has high property values, your local schools thrive. If your neighborhood was historically disinvested—redlined—your schools starve. This isn’t about motivation or merit. It’s about math.

In Detroit, for example, 80% of school funding comes from local taxes (EdBuild, 2019). But what happens when your neighborhood has experienced decades of devaluation? What happens when federal, state, and corporate investments skipped over your block for half a century? What happens is this: Black and Brown children are told to learn in environments white children would never be expected to tolerate.

This creates a cycle of inequality. Low funding leads to poor performance metrics. Poor performance metrics are used to justify charter takeovers or school closures. School closures destabilize communities and reduce home values further. And then the pattern repeats—new families avoid the area, further driving down the tax base.

From Desegregation to Re-Segregation

Brown v. Board of Education promised equality, but it never addressed funding disparities tied to geography. While schools were legally desegregated in the 1950s and 60s, white flight—accelerated by redlining maps—re-segregated them in practice (Orfield & Lee, 2007). Today, over 70% of Black students attend schools where more than half the student body is nonwhite and low-income (UCLA Civil Rights Project, 2020).

In places like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Dallas, re-segregation is a direct consequence of school zoning aligned with housing boundaries. Wealthy districts “secede” from larger school systems, creating their own exclusive enclaves. In Alabama, Gardendale’s attempt to break away from the Jefferson County school system was ruled unconstitutional because it was explicitly designed to exclude Black students (NAACP v. Gardendale City Bd. of Educ., 2018). The map was never neutral.

A War of Inches—and Reforms

To dismantle this structural inequality, we must start with funding reform. States like California have shifted toward weighted student funding formulas, which allocate more resources to students based on need rather than ZIP code (California Legislative Analyst’s Office, 2019). But these efforts are slow-moving, often politically contested, and undercut by federal funding gaps.

Other cities have implemented participatory budgeting, where community members help decide how school resources are spent. But without tackling the root problem—property-tax-based funding—the gap remains wide.

Reimagining school funding means asking radical questions: Why are schools tied to real estate? What if the federal government guaranteed a minimum per-pupil funding level nationwide? What if we redrew district lines to promote racial and economic integration instead of entrenching division?

Hope on the Horizon

Despite the weight of history, there are signs of resistance. In Boston, activists have used redlining overlays to push for reparative investment in schools (Boston Globe, 2021). In Minneapolis, the school board has redrawn attendance boundaries to increase integration. Nationally, the “Students First” movement is demanding that education equity be treated not as a local issue, but as a civil right.

This isn’t about guilt—it’s about justice. If America built inequality with a map and a pen, it can redraw the lines with intention and courage.

Conclusion: The Classroom as Battleground

The ZIP code your child is born into should not determine the quality of their education. Yet in too many cities, that is exactly what happens. The remnants of redlining are not relics—they are active agents of inequality, embedded in zoning laws, tax policies, and school board politics.

Redlining may have started as a housing policy, but it metastasized into a broader architecture of exclusion. And nowhere is that clearer than in our public schools. Until we confront this legacy directly—until we fund all schools equitably, redraw districts fairly, and invest in communities previously redlined—we will continue to reproduce the very disparities we claim to abhor.

Because the truth is simple: a nation that redlined its neighborhoods also redlined its children. The time has come to draw a new map.

Citations:

• Aaronson, D., Hartley, D., & Mazumder, B. (2017). The Effects of the 1930s HOLC “Redlining” Maps. Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

• Rothstein, R. (2017). The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.

• Nelson, R. K., Winling, L., Connolly, N., & Ayers, E. (2020). Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America. University of Richmond.

• Mitchell, B., & Franco, J. (2018). HOLC “Redlining” Maps: The Persistent Structure of Segregation and Economic Inequality. National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

• EdBuild. (2019). $23 Billion. A report on how property taxes contribute to educational funding inequality.

• Orfield, G., & Lee, C. (2007). Historic Reversals, Accelerating Resegregation, and the Need for New Integration Strategies. UCLA Civil Rights Project.

• UCLA Civil Rights Project. (2020). Segregation Still Hurts: The Impact of School Segregation on Students of Color.

• Urban Institute. (2023). GIS and Equity in Baltimore School Capital Projects: A 10-Year Study.

• California Legislative Analyst’s Office. (2019). Overview of the Local Control Funding Formula.

• NAACP v. Gardendale City Board of Education, 2018. U.S. District Court, Northern District of Alabama.

• Boston Globe. (2021). Boston School Advocates Push for Equity Using Redlining Data.