Housing policy is school policy.    This is the premise of an eponymous study recently published by the Century Foundation.  The study analyzed school data in Montgomery County, Maryland, one of the most affluent and high-achieving, in terms of elementary academic performance, in the nation.  Montgomery County also operates the oldest and one of the largest inclusionary zoning programs in the country.  According to the study, the zoning program has enabled development of over 12,000 moderately priced homes to be built around the County and nearly 1,000 public housing units for extremely low-income families to be placed in nearly all of the County’s elementary school areas.  The study tracked the academic performance of 858 elementary students residing in public housing around the County from 2001 and 2007.  The study found that the students that attended the lower-poverty schools performed eight percentage points higher on standardized math tests than students attending higher-poverty schools, despite the fact that the latter schools received an infusion of resources through the County’s aggressive efforts to improve performance in high poverty schools.  The study concludes that “highly disadvantaged children with access to the lowest-poverty neighborhoods and schools began to catch up to their non-performing peers, while similar disadvantaged children without such access did not.”   The study makes a compelling case for promoting and retaining zoning policies that promote mixed income developments and communities.   For more on the study, see the Washington Post article on this subject.