Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

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. This paper explores how the schools serving students from high- and low-income neighborhoods vary in two ways: by documenting the characteristics of the public schools linked to advantaged and disadvantaged neighborhoods; and by documenting the proximity of non-neighborhood school choice options (magnet and charter schools) for children in advantaged and disadvantaged neighborhoods.

We use 2009-13 American Community Survey data to classify neighborhoods (census tracts) by economic status. We classify neighborhoods according to their median income, creating quintiles within metropolitan areas. Then, we link neighborhoods to the local public schools that serving them using a neighborhood-school crosswalk. The crosswalk draws on attendance boundary shape files from the School Attendance Boundary System and uses spatial methods to create population-weighted links between Census geographies, local traditional public schools, and geographically proximate charter and magnet schools. We describe input and output characteristics of local schools, drawing on three national administrative datasets of 2013-14 school traits (the Common Core of Data, the Office of Civil Rights data, and EDFacts). First, we describe the racial/ethnic, economic, and ability composition of schools; second, we describe the school disciplinary and attendance climate; third, we describe teacher characteristics; and fourth, we describe schools' achievement level and growth.

Analyses systematically compare the characteristics of the traditional public schools serving higher- and lower-income neighborhoods. Results identify inequalities in the schools serving advantaged and disadvantaged neighborhoods and show how income segregation exacerbates those inequalities. Analyses also demonstrate that low-income neighborhoods are geographically proximate to a greater number of magnet and charter schools, alternatives to the comparatively lower-quality traditional public schools serving these neighborhoods. However, whether children residing in low-income neighborhoods actually attend these alternatives is an open question.

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.