Poor Neighborhoods, Bad Schools? Neighborhood Disadvantage and Educational Opportunities

Ann Owens

Research shows that neighborhoods are a critical context for children’s development and well-being. One reason neighborhoods matter for children is by shaping their local educational opportunities. Neighborhood effects research posits that children growing up in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods attend lower-quality schools, but little empirical research demonstrates this. This paper does so by documenting the instructional resources and achievement levels of the public schools linked to advantaged and disadvantaged neighborhoods.I use 2009-13 American Community Survey data to classify neighborhoods by socieconomic status as advantaged and disadvantaged. I use spatial methods to link children’s census tracts to their neighborhood public school using the School Attendance Boundary System. I compare the local educational opportunities available in advantaged and disadvantaged neighborhoods in two ways. First, I examine differences in instructional resources. I draw on Office of Civil Rights Data from 2013-14 on the universe of public schools in the U.S. to document differences in teacher experience, student-teacher ratios, student-counselor ratios, and availability of advanced math/science and AP courses in the schools serving advantaged versus disadvantaged neighborhoods. Second, I draw on EdFacts data to document the achievement levels, based on state assessments, of schools serving high- versus low-income neighborhoods. I examine differences in mean achievement levels, mean achievement growth, and achievement gaps among racial groups and between economically disadvantaged and advantaged students. For each measure of educational opportunity, I systematically document the gaps between the schools that advantaged and disadvantaged neighborhoods feed into.This paper provides systematic and comprehensive evidence on the ways that neighborhood residence is linked to educational opportunities, exploring a key mechanism—schools—through which neighborhoods affect the lives of children.

About Ann Owens

Ann Owens is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. She is a faculty affiliate of the Spatial Sciences Institute, the Sol Price Center for Social Innovation, the Population Research Center and the Children’s Data Network at USC. Prior to arriving at USC, Ann was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Stanford University. Ann received her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University. Her research focuses on social stratification, sociology of education, and urban sociology, specifically addressing the causes and consequences of racial and economic inequality in neighborhood and schools. Recent publications examine the consequences of changes in assisted housing policy for urban poverty concentration; and the role of school options in contributing to the income and racial residential segregation experienced by children. Her work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, Sociology of Education, Social Forces, and other journals.