What Research Reveals About Access and Opportunity

Where children live and attend school shapes the resources available to them, the institutions they encounter, and the people they come to know. Policies that change those conditions can influence the course of a child's life.

With support from the AIR Opportunity Fund, researchers at New America, the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, and the University of Southern California are examining three different approaches to expanding opportunity:

• Redrawing school district boundaries;
• Supporting families who use federal Housing Choice Vouchers to move to higher-opportunity neighborhoods; and
• Investing directly in neighborhoods through the federal Choice Neighborhood Initiatives.

While these approaches operate differently, they share a common question: What does it take to ensure that greater access to schools, resources, and opportunities translates into lasting benefits for children and families?

Redrawing school district boundaries

Zahava Stadler and her colleagues at New America have examined how school district boundaries shape access to resources and determine which children learn together.

School district boundaries do more than decide where children attend school. They also define the local tax base that supports those schools. As a result, the same lines that separate students by race and income often create artificial barriers between children and resources. But district boundaries are policy choices governed by states, and they can be redrawn. The research asks what happens if states intentionally draw district boundaries to promote both integration and fairer access to funding.

New America's modeled scenarios estimated that this style of redistricting could produce a 63% improvement in access to local property-tax revenue, 48% greater racial integration, and 55% greater economic integration-all without requiring families to move or changing property values.

Source: New America, September 2025.

Supporting families who choose to move

Thomas Silverstein's project at the Poverty & Race Research Action Council explores how housing mobility programs can better support families using Housing Choice Vouchers who choose to move to neighborhoods with greater access to high-performing schools, employment, and other resources.

Rather than assuming that a new address automatically creates new opportunities, the project is developing tools, training materials, and guidance to help mobility programs support families before and after a move. The work focuses on helping families understand school options, navigate enrollment and transitions, and assess whether schools are welcoming, supportive, and inclusive.

With the project scheduled to conclude at the end of 2026, the team is still testing and refining these tools to better understand which combinations of information, counseling, school-focused supports, and post-move engagement are most helpful for families.

Investing in neighborhoods

Huriya Jabbar's research at the USC Rossier School of Education examines the Detroit's Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, a program administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that aims to create mixed-income housing, strengthen community infrastructure, and invest in educational opportunities.

Her study focuses on the implementation in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood, including how housing, education, nonprofit, and public-sector organizations work together, how residents influence decisionmaking, and whether those efforts support integration, community voice, and inclusive neighborhood development.

Early findings suggest that achieving this type of coordination may be difficult. Although the initiative was designed to connect housing, education, and community development, researchers found that schools and districts often played a limited role in implementation, while nonprofit organizations assumed much of the education-related work. The findings suggest that more intentional and sustained engagement from education systems may be needed for the initiative to better connect neighborhood revitalization with improved outcomes for residents.

From Access to Opportunity

The three projects point to a common lesson: expanding access is a starting point, not an endpoint.

Redrawing district boundaries could give students fairer access to educational resources. Housing mobility programs can help families reach schools and neighborhoods with greater opportunity, but families may also need information, counseling, and support as they navigate new systems and communities. And even substantial neighborhood investments may fall short of their goals without strong coordination among schools, housing organizations, community groups, and residents.

It also depends on connection: between families and the supports they need, between institutions that shape opportunity, and between communities and the decisions that affect them. Those connections can help turn greater access into meaningful and lasting opportunity for children and families.

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About the AIR Opportunity Fund

The AIR Opportunity Fund supports community-led efforts to expand opportunity and improve lives. Backed by a $225 million commitment from AIR, the Fund provides funding, research, and hands-on partnership to help communities advance promising ideas and share lessons that can inform efforts in other places. Learn more.