Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Neighborhood-School Link in Gentrifying Areas

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation explores the changing relationship between neighborhoods and traditional public schools in the United States. In earlier decades, nearly all children attended their neighborhood school. Recent reports suggest, however, that the historically tight relationship between where families live and send their child to school has weakened. With a particular focus on how neighborhood and school processes play out in gentrifying areas, the investigators examine the neighborhood-school link in three key ways: (1) the link between neighborhood and local school racial and socioeconomic composition over time; (2) the link between where families live and whether they enroll their child in the local school; (3) how the loosening link between neighborhoods and schools affects educational outcomes. This dissertation represents one of the first multi-city, longitudinal studies to examine the evolving relationship between neighborhoods and traditional public schools in the U.S.; one of few national-level quantitative studies exploring the relationship between residential and school enrollment choices; and one of the first quantitative studies to explore the relationship between gentrification and schools. While most prior research focuses on either the neighborhood or school environment, this project analyzes both contexts simultaneously and takes seriously the spatial interdependence of neighborhoods and schools, enhancing basic understanding of the changing relationship between neighborhoods and schools. Such an approach will inform policies that jointly consider residential and school contexts. Together, these analyses will contribute to our understanding of trends, mechanisms, and effects of the changing neighborhood-school link and how this relationship unfolds in a context of urban and neighborhood change. Given how demographic changes are reconfiguring urban areas across the U.S., this research has important implications for theory, as well as for urban, housing, and education policies. Drawing upon multiple waves of data from several national data sources, this dissertation employs statistical analyses to address its questions, as well as geographic software and techniques to match neighborhood and school characteristics to families and students. First, this project combines data from the Census and National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) with unique school attendance boundary data on a subset of U.S. school districts for 2000 and 2010 to examine how school racial and socioeconomic composition changes as neighborhoods change, particularly in schools serving gentrifying neighborhoods. Next, this project moves beyond aggregate-level analyses, combining data from the Census, NCES, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to model school enrollment outcomes among families in gentrifying neighborhoods, exploring how schooling decisions are shaped by family and school characteristics and the availability of alternative schooling options. Finally, the investigators will model the effects of the changing neighborhood-school relationship on student achievement and persistence over time.