D.C.’s embrace of school choice began in earnest in the 1990s, but the city’s schools were segregated long before that. Underlying this is extreme housing segregation (and the hyper-racialized wealth inequality that feeds it). To better understand the scope of the issue, CityLab, a partner of The Atlantic, talked to Orfield about how education policies can help tackle the twin problems of housing and school segregation.

George Joseph: In both D.C. public and charter schools, white students are far more likely to be with other white students than a random distribution of the student population would have them be. Is this a simple story of extreme housing segregation, or are there other mechanisms at play?

Gary Orfield: There is an incredible income and jobs gap in D.C., and the housing costs in those neighborhoods tend to be impossible for many of the black families. D.C. has not used its subsidized housing policies to help with this problem, missing a key opportunity. D.C. has a larger unemployment racial gap than any state, which is, in part, the huge gap in educational achievement.

Joseph: It seems like school integration is almost impossible to enforce and make durable without accompanying moves to desegregate housing. What roles can schools play in this process, and what limits are there to a school-focused desegregation approach?

Orfield: The South’s mandatory countywide desegregation plans saw the highest and longest-lasting levels of desegregation. And there is strong evidence that it actually fostered more housing integration, since it removed most of the incentive for white departure and tended to create a level of integration that was widely acceptable across racial lines. But most of those plans dissolved following Supreme Court decisions in the l990s.

Joseph: Your report found that charter schools are significantly more segregated than traditional public schools. Why are D.C. charters so much more segregated, and what role has school choice played, if any, in preventing school desegregation in the district?

Orfield: Charters were created without the key mechanisms the magnet-school experience showed were essential. To achieving lasting diversity, you need to have recruitment across racial and ethnic lines, free transportation, a strongly appealing and distinctive curriculum, admission to all groups of students, integrated faculties, etc. School choice without such features almost always tends to stratify. Neighborhoods with schools that are already diverse or are mostly white and Asian don’t see the need for charters and often strongly support the local school.

Joseph: Could you expand on this more? How often do white and Asian families actually opt into school-choice programs in D.C.?