Gentrification, Geography, and the Declining Enrollment of Neighborhood Schools

Abstract

This study examines patterns and relations between gentrification and urban schooling across U.S. cities using longitudinal data from 2000 to 2014. The first section presents new statistics on the incidence and distribution of gentrification occurring around urban schools in the United States as a whole. Of the roughly 20% of urban schools located in divested neighborhoods in the year 2000, roughly one in five experienced gentrification in their surrounding neighborhood by 2014. However, there exists considerable heterogeneity in the prevalence of gentrification across U.S. cities, with exposure rates ranging from zero in some cities to over 50% in others. The second section finds evidence that gentrification is associated with declining enrollment at neighborhood schools, especially when gentrifiers are White.

Gentrifying Neighborhoods, Gentrifying Schools? An Emerging Typology of School Changes in a Gentrifying Urban School District

“…The typology highlights the importance of understanding how neighborhood gentrification can influence urban schools. Despite the relationship between schools and their neighborhood-based catchment areas, our findings align with previous research that suggest that neighborhood gentrification does not necessarily lead to school gentrification (e.g., Candipan, 2019;Pearman, 2020). In fact, none of the schools within gentrified neighborhoods actually experienced the phase of school gentrification during the years of data that we examined.…”

“…Given the connections between urban schools' catchment areas and local neighborhoods (Green et al, 2017), schools located in gentrifying neighborhoods can also be restructured through larger community-level racial and socioeconomic shifts (Posey-Maddox et al, 2014;Smith & Stovall, 2008). A growing body of research examines the nexus of neighborhood gentrification and urban schools (Billingham, 2019;Cucchiara, 2013;Diem et al, 2019;Freidus, 2016Freidus, , 2019Keels et al, 2013;Lipman, 2013;McGhee & Anderson, 2019;Pearman, 2019Pearman, , 2020Posey-Maddox, 2014;Roda, 2020). Scholars have analyzed the ways that gentrification remakes cities and deepens racial, educational, and social exclusion and oppression (Bridge, 2005;Lipman, 2013;Pedroni, 2011;Smith & Stovall, 2008), the impacts of neighborhood gentrification on academic achievement (Keels et al, 2013;Pearman, 2019), the demographics of gentrified neighborhoods and schools (Bischoff & Tach, 2018;Candipan, 2019), the engagement, consequences, and equity impact of white, middle-class parents in urban schools (Cucchiara & Horvat, 2009;Stillman, 2012), and how districts market schools to middle-class parents in gentrifying urban contexts (Cucchiara, 2013).…”

“…This research suggests that gentrified neighborhoods can impact local public schools' enrollment, demographics, transfers, and cultural landscape (Billingham & Kimelberg, 2013;Hankins, 2007;Posey-Maddox, 2014). While more recent scholarship on gentrification and schools examines national datasets (Candipan, 2019(Candipan, , 2020Pearman, 2020;Pearman & Swain, 2017), earlier research on the topic focused on in-depth case studies of single urban neighborhoods (DeSena, 2006) and rich ethnographic studies of individual schools (Posey-Maddox, 2014). Despite these varying methodological approaches and contributions, questions still remain about how neighborhood gentrification impacts urban schools over sustained periods of time in school districts.…”

The shape of neighborhoods to come: Examining patterns of gentrification and holistic neighborhood change in Los Angeles County, 1980–2010

“…However, we do find that a number of classes were associated with decreases in within-neighborhood income inequality, suggesting that the process of economic ascent is also one of economic homogenization in these contexts. Further, several classes showed marked increases in the share of children in private schools, indicating a complex relationship between gentrification and forms of inequality within the neighborhood context, and echoing the findings of prior research which finds that gentrifiers are more likely to send their children to private schools or public schools outside of their neighborhood district (DeSena, 2006;Pearman, 2020).…”

Fifteenth Annual AERABrownLecture in Education Research: Disrupting Punitive Practices and Policies: Rac(e)ing Back to Teaching, Teacher Preparation, andBrown

“…That is, in constructing race, people examine and interpret the physicality and outside markers of individuals. Race is also contextually, geographically place-centered, and spatially constructed (Alvarez, 2017; Green, 2015; Morris & Monroe, 2009; Pearman, 2020; Tate, 2008; Williams, 2018). For instance, race is conceptualized differently across continents and space.…”