Relocation Programs, Opportunities to Learn, and the Complications of Conversion

Since 1976, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has relocated low-income children of color from public housing communities to less racially and economically isolated neighborhoods in an effort to improve their developmental opportunities. This article provides the first comprehensive evaluation summary of seven relocation programs and the reasons why six of them failed to replicate the educational successes of the inaugural Gautreaux program. The author argues that children were not able to convert potentially greater opportunities to learn into educational success after they resettled due to four complications, including an absence of threshold effects in destination neighborhoods, the existence of cultural discontinuities, incompatibilities between HUD and educational policy and between educational institutions, and the uncertain relevance of neighborhoods and schools as sites of educational production. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)