How Violence in the Community Makes Its Way Into the Schools

• In Event: How Housing and Neighborhood Contexts Shape Children’s Educational Outcomes

Abstract

American children are now growing up in a nation that is much less violent than it was two decades ago. Although a large literature has attempted to explain why violent crime has dropped since the early 1990s, but largely absent from this literature is a thorough consideration of the implications of the national decline in violent crime for educational inequality in America. In this session I will discuss research that demonstrates the consequences for children of living and learning within violent environments, and explore how the dramatic decline in violent crime over the past two decades has affected academic achievement and academic inequality in America.

Author

• Patrick T. Sharkey, New York University