Housing Experiment for Poor Found to Lack School Payoff

Achievement unaffected by anti-poverty program.

A federal program that provides housing vouchers to help poor families move out of high-poverty neighborhoods appears to be having little impact so far on children’s academic achievement, a new report finds.

Four to seven years after leaving their old neighborhoods, the study found, children who took part in the program were doing no better in school than their peers who stayed behind in public-housing projects.

The study, which was posted this month on the Web site of the National Bureau of Economic Research, follows up on 2,300 families who took part in the federal Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing...