School deserts: Visualizing the death of the neighborhood school

The purported purpose of school choice policies is to increase students’ access to “good schools.” There is little discussion, however, of where those good schools are located, nor of the ways in which the distribution of good schools mirrors broader patterns of uneven development in the United States. Given that schools are neighborhood assets and that the distance which students travel to get to school affects their success, the locations of schools matter tremendously and are inextricable from questions of social and spatial justice. We introduce and argue for the explicit use of the term “school desert” as a way for scholars to understand and describe the spatial injustice of school closures and for activists to argue the importance of effective local schools. Spatial visualization and rendering of social problems is an invaluable strategy for effecting policy change. As cities move increasingly to a “de-spatialized” geography of schooling where catchment zones are less determinate of where a student attends school, it is important to consider where the desirable schools are and where they are not. A more nuanced visualization of school locations than neighborhood demographics offers a new lens through which to examine the (un)intended effects of school closures on students, communities, and development. Using Pennsylvania as a case study, we use a geographic information system (GIS) to evaluate the broader reverberations of school choice policies and determine who, demographically, has access to high-quality schools. In light of this research, we also propose an innovative analytic and methodology that describes the educational inequity which is caused by spatial relationships between students’ homes and high-quality schooling. Through the concept of a school desert we explore the (un)intended spatial implications of school closures. School deserts occur as a result of school choice policies that justify school closures. Closures and the location of good schools are geographically uneven, tempered by the federal and local policies that ensure income and racial segregation in US housing. Our analysis of Pennsylvania reveals the uneven distribution of access to good schools in the same way that mapping food deserts displays how market forces have failed to evenly distribute quality food. We find that areas with high-quality schools are significantly wealthier and whiter than school deserts, a conclusion which mirrors those concerning other low-quality neighborhood assets. School deserts as a methodology demonstrate that if students do not have geographic access to good schools, then school choice policies do not, in fact, offer choice.

Montessori Education and a Neighborhood School

Project SYNC (Systems, Yoked through Nuanced Collaboration) details perspectives of a community of stakeholders committed to the enhancement of early childhood (i.e., prekindergarten through grade 3) education. Although there is a growing number of public-school programs informed by the Montessori philosophy, Montessori educational experiences often take place within affluent communities. SYNC aimed to enhance the prekindergarten through grade 3 educational experiences for traditionally underserved students by transforming two traditional early childhood classrooms to Montessori settings within a diverse, Title I school. Montessori pedagogy, curricula, and materials aligned with the school’s dedicated commitment to social justice. The study, one in a series, explored the impact of Montessori education on a neighborhood school community as evidenced through stakeholder opinions, project implementation, and teacher attitudes. Project data illustrate that a Montessori educational experience created learning opportunities that supported children from culturally and ethnically diverse communities in a traditional, Title I elementary school.

Choosing Schools in Changing Places: Examining School Enrollment in Gentrifying Neighborhoods

School choice expansion in recent decades has weakened the strong link between neighborhoods and schools created under a strict residence-based school assignment system, decoupling residential and school enrollment decisions for some families. Recent work suggests that the neighborhood-school link is weakening the most in neighborhoods experiencing gentrification. Using a novel combination of individual, school, and neighborhood data that link children to both assigned and enrolled schools, this study examines family, school, and neighborhood factors that shape whether parents enroll in the assigned local school. I find that parents are more likely to opt out of neighborhood schools in gentrifying neighborhoods compared with non-gentrifying neighborhoods when nearby choice options are available. Recent movers to gentrifying neighborhoods bypass local schools more compared with parents who have lived in the neighborhood longer. Results have implications for thinking about neighborhood-school linkages in an era of school choice and urban change.

From Open Enrollment to Controlled Choice: How Choice-Based Assignment Replaced the Neighborhood School in Cambridge, Massachusetts

In 1981, Cambridge, Massachusetts, became the first school district in America to replace its neighborhood schools with a “controlled choice” assignment plan, which considered parental preference and racial balance. This article considers the history preceding this decision to explore how and why some Americans became enamored with choice-based assignment at the expense of the neighborhood school in the late twentieth century. It argues that Cambridge's problematic experience with open enrollment in the 1960s and 1970s created a vocal, consumer-oriented, and politically active class of parents who became accustomed to choice and, by the early 1980s, dependent on its benefits. Moreover, controlled choice proved especially attractive in this university community because Cambridge had a constituency of well-educated, middle-income parents who possessed the social capital to identify the best educational opportunities for their children, but lacked the economic capital to use real estate to gain access to their preferred schools.

Access to Qualified, Well-Supported Principals Across Alternative Educational Settings and Neighborhood Schools

Principals bear primary responsibility for supporting teachers. Principal leadership is especially important in alternative educational settings (AES; e.g., alternative schools, self-contained special education schools) that serve students with more substantial learning and behavioral needs, often with less-qualified and experienced teachers. We examined principals’ qualifications (i.e., principal certifications, preparation, and experience) and professional learning opportunities across AES and neighborhood schools. Analyzing data from the 2011–2012 Schools and Staffing Survey, we found that AES principals are, on average, less qualified than neighborhood school principals in terms of their experience, preparation, and administrative certification. Furthermore, AES principals have less access to professional development opportunities. Results are consistent with prior investigations that indicate an inequitable distribution of personnel resources in AES compared with neighborhood schools.

The Neighborhood-School Characteristics: As an Effective Factor of Social Sustainability in Neighborhood

The neighborhood unit promotes quality of life, community feeling, and well-being by providing facilities. Sharing the main facilities of the neighborhood with all residents can play an important role in the satisfaction of the neighborhood. When a school (as one of the facilities) is placed into the neighborhood context, it can affect environmental and social issues. Therefore, the neighborhood facilities and services would not purely increase all residents’ satisfaction, well-being and quality of neighborhood through its equal accessibility for all residents. This paper discusses how the quality of the neighborhood can be enhanced and promoted by the different characteristics of facilities like schools.The research method is based on an analysis of the affective features of a primary school on social sustainability in the neighborhood. The research has been done by recording sample participants’ ideas. The questionnaires were administered to 285 participants from two neighborhoods (with neighborhood-school and non-neighborhood-school) in Kerman, Iran. Results confirm that important features of the neighborhood -school have a direct affect on the quality of the neighborhood. The comfort, safety and harmony were identified as the most important of the six presented factors.

Branch School Buildings in the St. Louis Public Schools District: Tools to Support the Segregative Neighborhood School Policy of the St. Louis Board of Education

During and after World War II, large numbers of African Americans from the former Confederate States migrated to St. Louis, Missouri. The pace of this migration placed a strain on the St. Louis Public Schools district. The district responded to the facilities shortage by constructing small branch school buildings in its compliance with de jure segregation laws in Missouri before 1954, and after 1954, in its efforts to covertly maintain a pseudo-integrated public school district’s neighborhood school policy.

The neighborhood school stigma: School choice, stratification, and shame

Social scientists have begun to document the stratifying effects of over a decade of unprecedented charter growth in urban districts. An exodus of students from traditional neighborhood schools to charter schools has attended this growth, creating troubling numbers of vacant seats in neighborhood schools as well as concentrating larger percentages of high-need student populations like special education students and English Language Learners in these schools ( Buras, 2014 ; Gabor, 2014 ; Knefel, 2014 ). In cities like Philadelphia, the maintenance of two parallel educational systems – one charter, the other district – has also strained budgets and contributed to fiscal crises that have further divested traditional district schools of critical resources (Popp, 2014). How are youth, teachers, and staff in neighborhood schools responding to these conditions and the moral associations that the “neighborhood school” has come to invoke within an expanding educational marketplace? What does it mean to attend and/or work in a traditional neighborhood school in the midst of the dramatic restructuring of urban public education? Using frameworks developed in anthropological and sociological studies of social stigma, I explore in this paper how the power of market stratification has come to influence the intensification of institutional stigmas around the traditional neighborhood school ( Anyon, 1980 ; Goffman, 1963 ; Link and Phelan, 2001 ). Drawing on ethnographic data from a neighborhood school in Philadelphia, I center youth perspectives on their aspirations and life chances given their status as students in a non-selective neighborhood school in my analysis. I ultimately interrogate how notions of race, educational quality, and [lack of] school choice, impact this neighborhood school community’s sense of worth and future as individuals as well as an institution.