The status of Hartford’s city and suburban school districts also reversed trajectories during this same period. A century ago, Hartford Public High School offered what nearly all agreed to be the best secondary education in the entire region, attracting students into the city. According to HPHS student records, one out of five students resided outside of Hartford, many in bordering towns, and paid tuition to enroll. Emerging suburbs typically had no high school or one that some viewed as substandard. In nearby Wethersfield in 1917, parents strongly objected to plans to eliminate Latin in their fledgling high school, while four members of the local school board sent their children to Hartford city schools. Two decades later, a prominent survey by Columbia University Teachers College praised Hartford’s public high schools for “maintaining the ‘gold standard’ of its college preparatory students,” with a reputation “widely and favorably known through eastern collegiate circles.” As late as 1958, surveys of Hartford teachers reported it to be “common knowledge in education circles that the city of Hartford and its school system have enjoyed an excellent reputation as a good place in which to live and work over the past 20 years,” according to Trinity researcher Eric Lawrence. At the same time, ten miles west of the city, the rural town of Avon ceased busing its older students to a neighboring district and began constructing their own high school building. By the late 1990s, after decades of urban decline nearly caused Hartford Public High School to lose its accreditation, Avon High School claimed title to the most prestigious public secondary education in the Hartford region. 1
Link 4: View 1901 photo of Hartford Public High School, from the Connecticut Historical Society, placed on a map in its former location, in a new window.
(c) Oxford University Press, 1985.
What attracted white middle-class families to move from the cities to the suburbs? Ken Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier, which paved a way of thinking for a generation of suburban historians, boiled down the causes of post-war mass suburbanization to “two necessary conditions . . . the suburban ideal and population growth — and two fundamental causes — racial prejudice and cheap housing.” Indeed, there is supporting evidence for Jackson’s thesis in the Hartford region, particularly the influence of discriminatory public policy decisions on private housing markets. For instance, my colleagues at the University of Connecticut Libraries MAGIC Center and I reconstructed Hartford area maps, originally created by the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and private lenders in 1937 to assess mortgage risks by neighborhoods. Officials coded the best investments in green, and the worst in red, which led them to be known in later years as “redlining” maps. But rather than evaluate only the physical property conditions, field agents were instructed to record the racial, ethnic, and social composition of current residents, based on the prevailing White standards of the time. The reports discouraged lenders from offering mortgages to neighborhoods with an “infiltration” of “Negro,” “Foreign-born,” and “Relief families,” thereby favoring mortgage lending to White middle-class areas. Similarly, during the early 1940s, suburban West Hartford officials blocked African-Americans from moving into federally subsidized wartime public housing. Around the same time, some West Hartford real estate developers wrote racially restrictive covenants into deeds that prohibited residents “other than the white race” from renting or buying property, which remained legally enforceable until 1948, as Trinity alumna Tracey Wilson and student researcher Katie Campbell discovered. 2
Click on color-coded neighborhoods to explore HOLC ‘redlining’ map from 1937, hosted by University of Connecticut Libraries MAGIC, in a new tab/window.
Explore interactive map of race restrictive covenants in a new tab/window. Source: MAGIC, University of Connecticut Libraries
But Jackson does not explain how public schools fit into his equation, because their role shifted over time. During the immediate post-war years, doubts about the quality of schools in new suburbs meant that they did not serve as a primary motivator for leaving Hartford. Yet by the late 1950s and 1960s, suburban schools became powerful magnets that, on their own, began to attract White middle-class families. How do we explain this shift? The story of post-war metropolitan history needs to address how real estate interests, suburban homebuyers, and government officials contributed to the rise of a relatively new practice known as “shopping for schools.” 3
Migration out of Hartford was not driven by a perception of higher-quality suburban schools in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In several oral history interviews that Trinity researcher Jacqueline Katz conducted with former Hartford residents who moved to suburbs in the immediate post-war era, none mentioned educational quality as a deciding factor. Clifford Floyd, a Hartford insurance accountant who moved to Avon in 1952 with his spouse and three young children, gave a typical response. “We didn’t come to Avon because of the schools,” he explained. “We just thought it would be better to have a lot more land for the kids to play around in.” Even in West Hartford, where suburbanization began decades before the war, local newspaper editor Bice Clemow found low standards in school facilities, curriculum, and teacher salaries when using a survey drawn from Life magazine. “If we lived in a mill town, where the income level was modest, it would not be startling to find that we could not afford the best in public education,” wrote Clemow. “To document that we have grade B- secondary education available in West Hartford is a shock of another order.” 4
The rise of suburban schools can be attributed partly to the actions of real estate firms, which promoted selected private suburban homes by marketing their access to more desirable public schools. In West Hartford, as school enrollments grew with the post-war baby boom, a heated controversy arose at a 1954 school board meeting over a proposal to address overcrowding by redistricting neighborhoods to less crowded schools. Parents who objected based their views on the real estate market. “Whenever real estate men sell property, they tell their clients that they are in the Sedgwick, Webster Hill, or Bugbee areas,” attendance zones on the newly-constructed western side of town. Superintendent Edmund Thorne responded by blaming real estate agents for creating “social class consciousness” in the suburb, and asked, “Doesn’t it boil down to some people thinking there is more prestige to going to one school than another?” But what Thorne perceived as an imaginary distinction was becoming very real for suburban homebuyers. 5
Zoom in to see what these advertisements have in common. Source: Hartford Courant, May 1, 1960.
Newspaper advertisements reflect the rise of “branding” marketing by real estate firms during the 1950s and 1960s. Trinity researcher Kelli Perkins and other students compiled a sample of real estate ads in the Hartford CourantSunday edition from 1920 to 1990. We tabulated the proportion of ads that mentioned a specific school by name, rather than a generic description such as “near school.” Compared to other suburbs, West Hartford had the highest proportion of school-specific ads, peaking at 38 percent of all residential ads in the town in 1965. Through marketing, real estate firms sought to increase the dollar value of a private home by signaling its location within what homebuyers perceived as a more desirable public school attendance zone. Simply moving into the suburb of West Hartford was no longer sufficient: success also entailed buying into the “right” neighborhood” to attend a “good” public school. 6
But real estate firms did not treat all suburbs equally. Most agents refused to sell homes to Blacks in any suburb in the region during the 1950s, but they eventually shifted their stance on one town, Bloomfield, located on the northern border of Hartford and West Hartford. Middle-class African Americans such as Spencer Shaw, a librarian from the city of Hartford, reported having had “several refusals before from real estate people,” yet finally succeeded in purchasing a home through an agent in the early 1960s, from a Greek couple in Bloomfield. The sale sparked a racial transition. “I think within about two months, four or five of the other families moved out,” Shaw told Trinity interviewer Jacqueline Katz. 7
Link 7 (to come): Read Spencer Shaw’s 2003 oral history interview, hosted by Trinity Library, in a new window.
Real estate firms engaged in two discriminatory practices — block-busting and racial steering — that shaped the composition of Bloomfield and neighboring suburbs during the late 1960s and 1970s. In block-busting, a real estate agent introduced Black homebuyers into a White neighborhood to scare owners into selling their homes below market value to the agent, who immediately resold them above market value to Black buyers. This sales technique played on White racial fears to make a quick profit. Trinity researcher Aleesha Young compared city directory listings for selected streets where block-busting occurred in Bloomfield, and found some, such as Alexander Road, experienced a residential turnover rate of 41 percent from 1970 to 1975. In the related practice of racial steering, real estate firms diverted Black buyers to home sales in areas such as Bloomfield, while redirecting White buyers to places such as Avon and West Hartford. According to witnesses such as John Keever, a White homebuyer who asked to view homes in Bloomfield, real estate agents “made innuendos about the school system” there and warned about racial attacks against his daughter, but spoke about White suburban school districts in “glowing terms.” Together, busting and steering contributed to the racial population of the Bloomfield school district changing at a much faster rate than the town at large, illustrating a strengthening bond between public schools and private real estate, in the opposite direction. 8
Local organizations, with assistance from National Neighbors, a multi-racial advocacy group, led different challenges against real estate firms in the Hartford region. Adelle Wright, chairwoman of Bloomfield’s Human Relations Committee, recalled the “snowstorm of signs” on streets visited by block-busting real estate agents. The signs “reminded the people going into that neighborhood, every day of their lives [that], ‘My neighborhood is turning. I might be the last one here’,” she recalled in an interview with Trinity researchers. In 1973, Wright’s committee persuaded the Bloomfield town council to pass an ordinance against door-to-door and telephone solicitation by real estate agents, and a ban against “for sale” and “sold” signs being posted in front of private homes. 9
Link 8 (to come): Read Adelle Wright’s 2005 oral history interview, hosted by Trinity Library, in a new window.
Meanwhile, a Hartford-based organization known as Education/Instrucción, led by a trio of activists — Ben Dixon, Boyd Hinds, and Julia Ramos — mounted a broader challenge against discriminatory practices across the entire real estate and lending industry. In 1973, they organized teams of testers to visit real estate firms and pose as buyers to document racial steering, which was a violation of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. As Ramos explained in an oral history interview with Trinity researcher Jasmin Agosto, she and a Hispanic male “posed as a couple that barely spoke English, you know, our English was supposedly very minimal to a West Hartford real estate company. We walked in and basically made known through gestures and a little bit of English that we wanted to buy a house in West Hartford.” After some back and forth with the real estate office staff, “we were steered to the North End of Hartford and the South End of Hartford, shown houses and given listings in these two locations. All of this we taped.” With dozens of detailed accounts like this, activists built a legal case against eight large real estate firms in the Hartford area, and persuaded the US Justice Department to prosecute them for racial steering. In addition, Education/Instrucción published a series of reports, Fair Housing at its Worst, which extended charges of discrimination to mortgage lenders, downtown insurance corporations, and complicit government regulators. Although the court case resulted in a settlement against the real estate firms, they denied all wrongdoing and received a relatively mild penalty: monitoring and mandatory training on fair housing law. 10
Education/Instruccion trio. Source: to come.
Link 9 (to come): Read how Education/Instruccion built its case against racial steering in Fair Housing at Its Worst (1974), hosted by Trinity Library, in a new window.
The only large realty firm not to be charged with discriminatory practices was The R. W. Barrows Company. Former co-owner Larry Barrows spoke about real estate sales during this period during oral history interviews with Trinity researcher Cintli Sanchez. Barrows never used racial scare tactics nor had first-hand knowledge of those who did, but he conceded that, “We said some stuff we couldn’t say now.” He openly discussed racial, religious, and other qualities of neighborhoods and schools with clients. “I’m an old time liberal Democrat, so I would tell them, ‘Mixed neighborhood, mixed schools,’ and so forth,” Barrows explained, to help his clients identify the social composition of the neighborhood they desired. Sometimes he had candid discussions with Jewish homebuyers, to help them break into neighborhoods that had previously excluded them. Barrows acknowledged that when real estate agents talked about schools, “we were making judgments on the teachers and principals, which we had no business doing.” Still, Barrows emphasized that agents needed to be responsive to the needs of clients, especially Hartford’s large insurance corporation employees, who transferred into the region and “were brainwashed before they even looked at houses,” by co-workers who coached them to buy into a particular neighborhood. ” As he remembered, “People used to call an agent, and they would say, ‘I want to be in a certain school district’ . . . They wanted somebody who really knew quite a bit about the schools and the districts and so forth. So that was how you got business.” 11
By the late 1980s, real estate firms had discovered how to respond to clients’ requests about neighborhood school quality without violating fair housing laws. Rather than voicing their opinions, agents began distributing packets of school data, which became more widely available after Connecticut passed a 1985 law to create standardized student achievement tests (such as the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT), and subsequent requirements for uniform reporting of district data (the Strategic School Profiles). “Agents get so many questions from buyers about schools, and they are very conscious and concerned about giving out misleading information,” Lynda Wilson, President of the Greater Hartford Association of Realtors, told a reporter in 1993. “They are afraid if they give wrong information, they can be accused of steering.” Margaret O’Keefe, who had previously served as PTO president of two West Hartford schools, added that she understood new federal restrictions to mean it was permissible to share objective education data with clients, but not her own subjective judgments about the quality of individual schools. “You’re treading on very dangerous ground,” she concluded, “unless you have facts.” 12
The politics of the school accountability movement, combined with growing access to the Internet, fueled this data-driven wave of “shopping for schools” in the suburban housing market. In 1995, the Prudential Connecticut Realty Company opened its first experimental “computerized library,” located at their West Hartford office, for potential buyers to browse photographs of homes and “information on communities’ demographics and school systems.” The Connecticut Department of Education launched its own website in 1996, and began to include test score data for individual schools for the first generation of web surfers in 1997. By the year 2000, homebuyers with computer access could easily and instantly view details about local schools, whether located around the corner or across the country. Part of the data revolution was driven by state education agencies, to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. But private real estate firms and non-profit education advocates also harnessed the Web to deliver school-level test scores and demographics to millions of families who eagerly consumed it. 13
How much money were families willing to pay to purchase a private home on the more desirable side of a public school boundary line? Trinity Professor Diane Zannoni and her team of econometrics students collaborated with me to answer this question. We compiled public records for single-family home sales in the West Hartford Public School district (to avoid differences between suburbs), and mapped them inside the eleven elementary school attendance zones, which varied by test scores and racial composition. We limited our study to a ten-year period (1996 to 2005) where test formats and attendance zones remained relatively stable, which we split into two halves to gauge the growing influence of school data available via the Internet. Furthermore, we controlled for characteristics of the house (such as interior square footage and lot size), and also the neighborhood, by identifying sales within a very close distance of boundary lines that were drawn through the middle of residential areas, rather than along major roads or parks. Overall, we found that the test-price relationship was positive and significant: a one standard deviation in elementary school test scores produced a 2 percent increase (about $3,800) in the price of an average home during this decade. But we also discovered the increasing significance of race in this predominantly White suburb. During the latter half of our time period (2002-05), the racial composition of the school became much more influential: a one standard deviation in the percentage of minority students led to a 4 percent decrease (about $7,500) in the cost of an average home. In other words, as homebuyers in this predominantly White suburb make decisions about where to live, the sales data suggest that they are becoming more sensitive to the racial composition of their children’s future classmates than their test scores. 14
Link 10: Read how we designed our study of home prices on adjacent sides of school attendance zones, published in the American Journal of Education (PDF file).
In this suburb, how do we explain why test scores mattered, but the school’s racial composition became more influential on single-family home prices over time? Part of the answer comes from a parallel qualitative study conducted by Trinity researcher Christina Ramsay and co-authors in the CSS seminar, based on door-to-door interviews conducted with 89 recent homebuyers in West Hartford. Fewer than 35 percent of those homeowners with (or expecting) children reported directly “researching” schools by searching for school information online or visiting schools in person. By contrast, over 50 percent found information about school quality through indirect means: their social networks of family, friends, and co-workers. Another part of the answer appears in a Washington DC study, which monitored how users actually conduct searches with an online school information site. They found that users were strongly biased toward checking demographic data on schools, and when making comparisons, tended to reject those with higher percentages of Black students. Together, these three studies suggest that while not all homebuyers directly access school information online, the expansion of the Internet may amplify the power of racial and test data as it travels through their social networks. 15
Notes:
- Student records, 1882, Hartford Public High School Museum and Archive; “Kicks on Schools in Wethersfield: Dissatisfaction Expressed at Parents’ Meeting: City Gets Sons of Board Members,” Hartford Courant, April 11, 1917, page 11; Columbia University, Teachers College, Institute of Educational Research, Division of Field Studies. The Hartford Public Schools in 1936-37: A Comprehensive Report of the Survey of the Public Schools of Hartford, Connecticut. New York: Columbia University, 1937, pamphlet X, page 13; Personnel Policies: A Report Submitted to the Hartford Board of Education, 1958, in The Hartford Public Library Pamphlet Collection, cited in Eric Lawrence, “Teacher Suburbanization and the Diverging Discourse on Hartford Public School Quality, 1950-1970” (American Studies senior research project, Trinity College, 2002.), pp. 29-30. Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford, Connecticut, (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/35/). ↩
- Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 287; “Federal HOLC ‘Redlining’ Interactive Map, Hartford Area, 1937,” University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center (MAGIC), accessed March 2011; Katherine Ellen Winterbottom, “Beneath the Veneer (Racial Discrimination in Federally Subsidized Wartime Suburban Housing),” The Spectator (West Hartford Historical Society newsletter) Autumn (1998): 1, 10-4; Tracey Wilson, “Taking Stock of High Ledge Homes and Restricted Covenants,” West Hartford Life 13, no. 2 (2010): 36-37. ↩
- Jack Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools: How Public Education and Private Housing Shaped Suburban Connecticut,” Journal of Urban History forthcoming (2012). ↩
- Clifford Floyd, oral history interview with Jacqueline Katz, June 2003, cited in Jacqueline Katz, “Historical Memory and the Transformation of City and Suburban Schools” (Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, December 2004) Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford, Connecticut, (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/27/); Bice Clemow, A Layman Looks At Schools in West Hartford: A Series Reprinted From the West Hartford News From January 25 Through February 15, 1951, Based on the Life Magazine Questionnaire (West Hartford, CT: West Hartford News, 1951). ↩
- “New School Lines Offered by Thorne,” Hartford Times, April 8, 1954. ↩
- Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools” ↩
- Spencer Shaw, oral history interview with Jacqueline Katz, 2003, Hartford Studies Collection, Watkinson Library, Trinity College. ↩
- Aleesha Young, “Real Estate, Racial Change, and Bloomfield Schools in the 1960s and ‘70s” (Educational Studies Research Project, Trinity College, 2005) Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford, Connecticut, (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/18/); Keever quoted in James Ross, “Realty Bypassing Told By Resident,” The Hartford Courant, June 21, 1973. ↩
- Adelle Wright, oral history interview with Meredith Murphy and Aleesha Young, April 11, 2005, Hartford Studies Project, Watkinson Library, Trinity College. ↩
- Julia Ramos Grenier, oral history interview with Jasmin Agosto, November 2009, deposited in the Hartford Studies Project, Watkinson Library, Trinity College and cited in Jasmin Agosto, “Fighting Segregation, Teaching Multiculturalism: The Beginning of the Education/Instrucción Narrative of the 1970s Hartford Civil Rights Movement.” Educational Studies Senior Research Project, Trinity College, revised June 2010. Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford, Connecticut, (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/10/); Education/Instruccion, Fair Housing At Its Worst: The Flagrant Violation of Title VIII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act in Greater Hartford, Connecticut (Reports 1-8) (Hartford, CT: February – May 1974), deposited at Trinity Library. Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford, Connecticut, (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_archives/). ↩
- Larry Barrows, oral history interviews with Cintli Sanchez, June 27 and July 5, 2007, Hartford Studies Project, Watkinson Library, Trinity College. ↩
- William Hathaway, “How Are the Schools? Now It’s Easy to Find Out,” The Hartford Courant, September 26, 1993, page J1. ↩
- Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools.” ↩
- Jack Dougherty, Jeffrey Harrelson, Laura Maloney, Drew Murphy, Russell Smith, Michael Snow, Diane Zannoni, “School Choice in Suburbia: Test Scores, Race, and Housing Markets,” American Journal of Education 115, no. 4 (August 2009): 523-548. Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford, Connecticut, (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/1/). ↩
- Christina Ramsay, Cintli Sanchez, Jesse Wanzer, the Educ 308 Seminar with Professor Jack Dougherty, Shopping for Homes and Schools: A Qualitative Study of West Hartford, Connecticut (Hartford, CT: Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project at Trinity College, December 2006), Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford, Connecticut, (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/25/). On the Washington DC study, see Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider, Charter Schools: Hope Or Hype (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). ↩
It was surprising to know that 20% of the students who reside outside of Hartford commute and paid tuition to attend schools in Hartford. I would not have known that Hartford’s public high schools were one of the best high schools in the nation. I wonder how it collapses so dramatically. I noticed a strong correlation between good housing and good schools and vice versa. As suburban began to move to the suburban, housing attached white middle class families and so did that of the suburban schools. I was shocked to learn that none of the families had move to the suburban in the immediate post-war because of educational equality reasons. They emphasized more of the geographic look of the region, which clearly shows that families valued more land for kids to play around in than the quality of education that their children would receive. I thought it suspicious. All of these segregation movies after the 1948 explicitly had to do with real estate agents individual behaviors. West Hartford intentionally promoted school-specific ads in order to raise private home values. Real estate promoted good schools as advertisements to get people to move to West Hartford to benefit from good schooling. I wonder how things would have been if there were more black real estate. I think it would be great if there were programs existing that promoted more blacks to the field of real estate. There should be more government regulation on the actions of the real estate. “The only large realty firm not to be charged with discriminatory practices was The R. W. Barrows Company.” I can’t believe that so many of the firms were practicing discrimination. Even after the Civil Rights Movements, our country still holds prejudice view as illustrated by the data that White suburb focus more on demographic data of the school than the school’s quality.
Through a variety of examples, such as redlining maps, racially restrictive covenants in property deeds, block-busting, racial steering, and more, this chapter portrays real estate agents in the Hartford area in an extremely negative light. In its description of block-busting, for instance, the chapter criticizes real estate agents for using a “sales technique [that] played on White racial fears to make a quick profit.” (OntheLine Preview Chapter 2) In this example, the author places the blame for block-busting on the real estate agent. However, the author could have named other entities, or a combination of entities, as responsible for the discriminatory practice, such as the white homeowners that held fears of black families entering their neighborhoods, or the political climate of the 50s and 60s that created opportunities for real estate agents to make money off of discriminatory practices. Pointing to these factors enables a more comprehensive view of block-busting, and sees real estate agents as agents of larger cultural and structural issues, rather than independent culprits. In light of this, the author is overly narrow in assigning significant blame to real estate agents for the discriminatory nature of American suburbanization.
“The rise of suburban schools can be attributed partly to the actions of real estate firms, which promoted selected private suburban homes by marketing their access to more desirable public schools.” It is intriguing to examine just what made and makes a suburban area “desirable” in the context of the article, which paints real estate agencies as Machiavellian entities that endeavor to maximize profit. It seems that these agencies capitalized on a widespread contempt for minorities and developed several discriminatory techniques in order to sell homes. The psychology of race seems to be a key link in the home value and school selection variables, especially in light of the powerful assertion that home buyers are “becoming more sensitive to the racial composition of their children’s future classmates than their test scores.”
I was surprised to find out that Hartford once had the best schools in the state because now, it actually has some of the worst schools in the state. The state of Connecticut has one of the largest achievement gaps in the nation when looking at high stakes testing and comparing White students to students of color. While observing a sixth grade classroom in a Hartford school, I was shocked to see that the sixth graders were reading books that were maybe at a third grade level from my own experience in schools. Many of these students aren’t up to grade level material as other White students in CT.
A finding that I found particularly interesting in the above essay was that families were more interested in the racial composition of the students in the school rather than the test scores of the students. For me, it is hard to understand why families are more interested in racial composition than testing scores. I would think that parents would be more interested in the test scores because although each student gets an individual score, the overall test scores for students in a particular school are a reflection of the education available to the student within that school
One part of the essay I found interesting was the section discussing the settlement with the real estate agencies. When prospective buyers came in pretending to have limited English, the practice of steering occurred. Even when caught basically red-handed, the agencies denied any wrong doing. How could their representatives say they didn’t engage in steering when it was on film or recorded? The only answer I see being plausible is that they didn’t deny that they used steering with these buyers, but rather they denied that the practice was wrong. Because they didn’t feel that steering was wrong, it is no surprise that it and other racially discriminative practices in real estate continue to exist. Unfortunately, part of me feels that this may just be a “way of the world.” I’m not justifying or excusing the practice in any way, however, if these are successful tactics to make more money, I can’t say I’m shocked that agents use them. What is most discouraging to me is not that the practice exists, but that they don’t believe it’s wrong.
I thought that it was very effective to begin the chapter with a historical perspective of Hartford Public Schools. Most readers, myself included, would be surprised to learn that Hartford High School was once the best in the region. Although I expected that in the early to mid 1900s, when Hartford was a very wealthy city, that schools would be “good” I was shocked to learn that suburban parents paid to enroll their students at HHS. I find it extremely ironic that more that 50 years ago suburban parents wanted to enroll their students in a Hartford school while today the opposite is true. Many suburbs are extremely reluctant to enroll Hartford students participating Project Choice (or the earlier Project Concern). Excluding the high performing magnet schools, it would be unheard of that a suburban parent chose to enroll their child in a Hartford school.
It is surprising to me how much of an influence realtors had in forming the racial segregation that exists today in Connecticut. Shopping for schools in and of itself is not a negative thing, and it is reassuring to know that parents value education enough to make major life decisions based on school quality. What made the increase in the availability of school information so significant in terms of racial segregation was that it was combined with realtor practices such as steering and blockbusting. Despite the power of information, parents did not truly have the ability to pick the neighborhood with the “best” school because realtors limited their options based on racial qualifications. Had realtors been race neutral, shopping for schools probably still would have resulted in increased economic segregation, since increased demand would drive up the cost of housing in neighborhoods with the highest quality schools. But many neighborhoods have a variety of housing, so the effect would not have been nearly as significant. Additionally, economic circumstances can change, but race is inherent, so racial barriers are far more formidable obstacles. It is difficult to assign blame to any one group for the effects of years of racist behavior in this country, but it seems that realtors played an especially prominent role in creating the racial divides that exist today.
I knew of practices like redlining and “zoning” non-white individuals into certain neighborhoods preventing access into predominantly white ones, but I had not realized that other more effective practices were being used. It is more obvious the types of affects these practices such as block busting have long lasting affects in addition to more cleaver practices that are still being used by real estate and public housing agents. These behaviors have contributed to the “doughnut” that Hartford and surrounding neighborhoods create in terms of housing values. Individuals who can afford to move out into “better” neighborhoods with “better” schools will help to create higher home values.
I was surprised to find out that some actors posed as immigrants trying to buy houses in the suburbs in order to document racial steering. I have learned about past unfair housing policies and practices in previous courses, but I never knew that the actions of real estate agents were documented.
I was also surprised to find that families were not “shopping for schools” when they first moved to the suburbs. However, over time, good public schools became one of the main reasons for families who could afford it to move out of Hartford. Nowadays, that is one of the first things that homebuyers look for when purchasing a new home.
The term “doughnut” perfectly describes the housing values around the city of Hartford. The lowest values are in the center while the highest are in the surrounding suburbs, such as Avon and West Hartford. It is mind-blowing to think that Hartford once had the highest performing high school in the area, and Avon had one of the lowest. The tables have completely turned and it makes me wonder if the performance in schools could ever flip-flop again.
Although I found this entire preview fascinating, I was most interested in the segment pertaining to the substantial role that real estate firms had in the racial segregation of the city and surrounding suburbs. I was disgusted to learn that the real estate developers of West Hartford seemed to be a driving force in the racism that seems to (to this day) engulf this area. This preview was particularly effective in informing the public of the injustices committed by the real estate developers (by writing deeds that restricted any minority group from renting or acquiring property). Additionally, it seems as though the real estate firms went above and beyond to not only sell a home—however, sell a lifestyle that they found to be the ideal—the “American dream”, as you will. Unfortunately, this image of the “idealistic lifestyle” that they instilled into the potential (white) buyers back then, still lingers over modern day society; subsequently (for the most part) keeping the various racial groups segregated by neighborhoods. That particular example included of Bloomfield resident, Spencer Shaw, was incredibly effective in demonstrating this racism that existed (and arguably, still exists). And by actually including an example of a person who is just an average working man—a librarian—who was denied on various occasions to receive loans to move out to the suburbs on the basis of his skin color really added a personal touch to this analysis. By including examples such as these, it adds more intimacy in the piece—drawing in the reader to actually see the realities of the dire situation occurring around us. There is something so much more that a personal account or story can do for the audience—more so than just mere statistics, tables, graphs, etc.
In all, this preview chapter is incredibly interesting, especially because I am from this area and went to pubic school in the suburbs around Hartford. The maps showing the housing values and showing who has the most project choice kids bused in was even more interesting to me because many of my friends growing up were a part of this program. Reading this preview chapter made me so excited to learn even more about Hartford and the suburbs surrounding Hartford. Although I’m from this area, I was surprised to know that Hartford was one of the richest cities in the world. I was aware that Hartford was once rich, but not that rich. This was incredibly interesting to me because I live in a town and around towns that are very much wealthy, and it’s interesting to see that as time has passed, Hartford has become poorer as these towns have become richer. This particular part of the preview chapter was the most interesting to me because it was mainly about people moving to the suburbs, such as the suburb I grew up in. I didn’t realize that people initially moved to the suburbs not for the schooling, but it is interesting to know that as time progressed, that became more important. The only reason my family lives in a suburb is because of the schooling, and it is interesting to see that that was not the case at first. However, it is interesting to see how education became more important as time has passed, but at the same time, racial composition is still important as it was then. Before reading this and reading American Apartheid, I had no clue how much racial composition impacted housing and how the realtors got so involved. I knew that prejudice was obviously a factor in where people moved and lived, however, I had no clue what measures people went to avoid living with others of other races.
I found this section on “shopping for schools” interesting. When completing my housing simulation, I had a similar thought process as Mr. Floyd. I was born and raised in a small town that contained houses with large properties big enough to have pools in the backyard and even a corral along with a barn for horses. Later on, as a teenager, I moved to the big city of Chicago where houses were literally less than 20 feet a part in many areas. This drastic change in housing made me appreciate the ability to own a home that had enough space and play area for children. Therefore, when I began my search for homes, I checked not only the price but also the amount of space between the homes in the photos. I agree with Mr. Floyd and also think that children need to have enough yard room for safe playing to occur and to encourage them to get outside more often. Although schooling was one of the last options I looked at, I did notice the amount of school postings there were in the housing ads. In fact, while on http://www.realtor.com I viewed housing ads that had listed which schools were in the area directly in the main ad for the houses, as well as, a tab labeled “schools and neighborhoods” on most listings. Overall, I am still a bit shocked at the extreme level of emphasis and effort that some parents put into finding houses in areas where the so-called “good schools” are.
Part 3 addresses the question of how suburbs become organized by race. The chapter also outlines the history of schools in suburban areas. What I did not expect to discover in this chapter, however, was that prior to the boom in suburbanization after the war, schools in the city where more desirable than those in the suburbs. All my life, either directly or indirectly, I have been taught that schools in the suburbs were better. But upon hearing that suburban schools did not always have the superior reputation, my initial response was, “How did this happen?”
The answer I got, after reading a few more paragraphs into the chapter, was a little unsettling. In a 1954 school board meeting, Superintendent Edmund Thome pin-pointed the main motivator of housing and school choices: real estate firms. Maybe schools in the suburbs were not always the best. However, through positive advertisement and a push to bring whites out of the city, better schools in the suburbs became a reality. It is scary to think that education can be determined by companies trying to make a profit. Yet, the scenario is very real. Knowing how something as important as education can be swayed by a real estate firm causes me to question my own education and wonder about the true reason why the schools I attended were available to me.
Reading through this section, I found many facts striking. Firstly, my mom was a realtor. She knew what questions she could and couldn’t ask as our family moved. We moved over a dozen times and schools were always a large priority. I could not believe that “shopping for schools” was such a recent development. Moving to the suburbs for space and separation from the city while still having convenience of location occurred to me as important but always secondhand to quality of education.
Block-busting and racial steering were terms I had never heard but definitely experienced. Coming from a mixed family, I have seen the differences whether my mom or father is the one present at the home buying or shopping experience. Little did I know how much racial stereotyping and prejudices affect home prices, rankings of neighborhoods, and educational quality. Homes should be valued at their worth, and the fact the racial, socioeconomic status, and educational level is becoming more and more publically accessible creates in me a fear of widening class gaps and educational equality. I found the influence of real estate firms on the educational system and neighborhood demographics shocking. While it makes sense after the fact, I never would have known about this intricate historical differences before reading this piece.
How would the schools de different if they were all equally integrated? Would they be stronger?
I found it very interesting that Hartford High School was one of the best high schools in the nation. It is sad that once White students migrated, the school ratings went down. Do you think that the reason Hartford High thrived for as long as it did, is in part because of the “White model?” Is it safe to say that a minority school cannot thrive on its own?
To the contrary, there are some examples of high-scoring predominantly Black and/or Latino public schools. For one in Hartford, see: Success within Segregation: Jumoke Academy Exposes the Limits of Integration as an Educational Benchmark, by Fionnuala Darby Hudgens and Mary Morr.
You seem to say that after the 1970′s real estate firms didn’t steer clients into certain homes based on race, yet you later say that similar practices are happening today but are being performed by home buyers rather then real estate agents. Is there a fair way to make sure that families distribute themselves evenly throughout districts? It would seem that no matter the year wealthy families will tend to buy houses in areas with better schools that will offer their children a great education.
Is the Real Estate market still advertising “valuable” land by putting emphasis on which school district one’s children would attend if they were to purchase the house? It is that big a factor in buying a house in today’s economy?
Are there any other problems real estate interests, suburban homebuyers, and government officials contributed to besides “shopping for schools.”?
Is the migrigation of white families to suburban areas the main reason to blame for the Hartford school system taking a turn for the worse? With many succesful predominantly Black and Latino schools in other areas, it seems that cannot be the sole reason? What has happened to Hartford as a city itself to let the schools become this way?
Building off Avery’s question, are there any current districts in Connecticut in which families have been able to successfully distribute themselves evenly?