
Erica Frankenberg
Connect with Erica
About Erica
Frankenberg's research focuses on how federal, state, and local policies affect the segregation and opportunity of racially/ethnically diverse students. Overarching themes in Frankenberg's writings include how the design of school choice policies relates to racial and economic segregation; studying the intersection of housing and school composition; and examining the complex patterns of segregation and inequality emerging in suburban school districts. She serves as an expert witness in school desegregation cases, is a research advisory panel member of National Coalition of School Diversity and fellow at National Education Policy Center, and regularly consults with policymakers at all levels.
Contributions
No Jargon Podcast
In the News
Publications
Examined how Obama and Trump officials envisioned and changed the role of the federal government in fostering K-12 race-conscious educational policies and what mechanisms they used to advance priorities.
Finds that the average Black and Latinx children’s ECE providers received substantially less tiered funding than the average White child’s provider. Shows that funding also varies by the racial composition of children’s communities, with providers serving children from predominantly Black communities receiving far less funding than providers serving children from predominantly White communities. Racial funding gaps widened over time.
Discovers that despite high residential segregation, educational segregation varies in these three districts. Mentions the two districts that sought to increase diversity in their student assignment policies, educational segregation was lower than in the third district that did not consider diversity, despite similar levels of residential segregation.
Illustrates that public housing and LIHTC housing developments are zoned to racially and economically isolated schools, and that developments are associated with especially high levels of economic and racial isolation for Black and Latinx students.
Compares the contribution of school district boundaries to school and residential segregation in the Southern counties that experienced secession since 2000. Shows that school district secession is restructuring school segregation in the counties where secession is occurring, with segregation increasingly occurring because students attend different school districts.
Discusses analysis of the use of a new generalized, race-conscious SAP in Jefferson County (Kentucky) Public Schools suggests that their plan is largely able to maintain integrated schools, albeit with some increasing racial segregation; economic segregation patterns are mixed.