School reform policies, such as the closure of “low-performing” schools and the competitive introduction of school choice and charters, were presented to communities of color as the fix to educational inequities and the lifeline needed for urban Black students to have a chance at a quality education and social mobility. The ways in which reforms have under-delivered on this promise, and in some cases exacerbated negative academic outcomes, particularly for Black boys, are documented. Yet, research on the experience of Black adolescent girls is sparse. We explore ways that policies aimed at delivering a school choice environment have affected daily life for Black adolescent girls. We examine this issue in the context of the Detroit metropolitan area with Black adolescent girls, reflecting on their high school education experiences that spanned a time-period of rapid transitions in the schooling environment (2014–2016) prompted by a series of school reforms in Michigan. Through in-depth interviews we found that girls sought to invest in their high school education as a path to college; yet the very reforms advanced as ways to clear this path hindered their ability to spend time on the human and social capital activities believed to be important to their academic success and social mobility. Our findings suggest advantages for those students with proximal access to high quality neighborhood schools cannot be replicated in a choice environment. There may also be health consequences of the coping strategies girls are compelled to employ to carry on under adverse educational circumstances.

Waves of migration to and flight from Atlanta by both White and Black residents and businesses have constantly imagined and re-imagined the city as both politically regressive and racially progressive, and from an environmental health perspective, as both a riskscape and a safe haven. We argue that the persistent racial, social, environmental, and health inequities in Atlanta have been fostered and exacerbated by the exponential growth of the city and the persistent rhetoric of it being “the city too busy to hate.” This paper is informed by extant research on housing and transportation policies and processes at work in Atlanta since the end of the Civil War, and in particular, the predatory and subprime lending practices during the past thirty years. This paper examines how young people, living in a neighborhood where over 50% of the houses are currently vacant and contending with threats of school closures, experience the contemporary foreclosure crisis. Using qualitative data from focus groups with middle school youth, this paper offers youth-informed perspectives and local knowledge by offering responses of marginalized populations in Atlanta who inhabit, rather than flee, their built and social environments.