New charter schools can potentially provide disenfranchised students with enhanced academic opportunities while simultaneously serving as neighborhood anchors that reinforce neighborhood socioeconomic growth. However, for both of these arguments to be true, charter schools would have to replace low‐performing public schools in currently disadvantaged, but revitalizing, neighborhoods. Using data from the Chicago Public Schools, the Common Core, and the Census, we examine the neighborhood and school‐level factors that account for where elementary schools closed and opened in Chicago during the late 1990s and 2000s. We find that schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods were more likely to close, but only because these were also underperforming and under‐enrolled schools. After controlling for educational demand, new schools were more likely to open in neighborhoods that showed signs of socioeconomic revitalization and declining proportions of white residents.

Gentrification is generally associated with improvements in neighborhood amenities, but we know little about whether the improvements extend to public schools. Using administrative data (from spring 1993 to spring 2004) from the third largest school district in the United States, we examine the relationships between gentrification and school-level student math and reading achievement, and whether changes in the composition of the student body account for any changes in achievement. After testing several alternative specifications of gentrification, we find that, in Chicago, gentrification has little effect on neighborhood public schools. Neighborhood public schools experience essentially no aggregate academic benefit from the socioeconomic changes occurring around them. Furthermore, they may even experience marginal harm, as the neighborhood skews toward higher income residents. For the individual student, starting first grade in a school located in a gentrifying neighborhood has no association with the relative growth rate of their test scores over their elementary school years.

Much of the literature on racial and ethnic educational inequality focuses on the contrast between Black and Hispanic students in urban areas and white suburban students. This study extends past research on school segregation and racial/ethnic disparities by highlighting the importance of rural areas and regional variation. Although schools in rural America are disproportionately white, they nevertheless are like urban schools, and disadvantaged relative to suburban schools, in terms of poverty and test performance. The group most affected by rural school disadvantage is Native Americans, who are a small share of students nationally but much more prominent and highly disadvantaged in rural areas, particularly in some parts of the country. These figures suggest a strong case for including rural schools in the continuing conversation about how to deal with unfairness in public education.

Educational outcomes vary dramatically across schools in the United States. Many under-performing schools, especially in Chicago, also deal with high levels of violent crime on school grounds. Exposure to this type of frequent violence may be an important factor shaping already disadvantaged students’ educational experiences. However, estimating the effect of school violence on learning is difficult due to potential selection bias and the confounding of other school-level problems. Using detailed crime data from the Chicago Police Department, complete administrative records from the Chicago Public Schools, and school climate surveys conducted by the Consortium on Chicago School Research (2002–10), this study exploits variation in violent crime rates within schools over time to estimate its effect on academic achievement. School and neighborhood fixed-effects models show that violent crime rates have a negative effect on test scores, but not on grades. This effect is more likely related to direct reductions in learning, through cognitive stress and classroom disruptions, than changes in perceived safety, general school climate, or discipline practices.