Gentrification, Segregation, and Stratified Opportunity in Urban Schooling

• In Event: School Resource Allocation

Abstract

Introduction
Gentrification is often framed as a policy win—rising property values, improved public services, and enhanced school performance. But for historically marginalized communities, especially Latinx families in urban centers, these “improvements” often coincide with displacement and exclusion. In education, this plays out not only through school closures or shifting district lines, but also through more subtle mechanisms of stratification that limit access to academic rigor and long-term opportunity.

Purpose
This study investigates: In what ways does gentrification shape Latinx students’ access to rigorous coursework, such as advanced math and science classes, in urban public schools? The work challenges dominant narratives that equate neighborhood revitalization with educational equity, instead centering how systemic stratification reasserts itself during periods of urban transformation.

Methods
Utilizing data from the restricted-use High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), this study integrates student-level demographic and academic records with census tract data on neighborhood change, school accountability metrics, and segregation indices. The analysis leverages stratification economics as its theoretical anchor—emphasizing how opportunity is structured by group-based social and economic hierarchies rather than individual choices or merit. The study employs multivariate logistic regression and path analysis to model the relationship between neighborhood-level gentrification, school sorting mechanisms (e.g., tracking and course placement), and Latinx students' access to advanced coursework.

Results
Preliminary results suggest that schools in gentrifying neighborhoods experience rising accountability scores and reputational gains. However, Latinx students—particularly those from lower-income households—are underrepresented in advanced coursework compared to their white and more affluent peers. These disparities persist even after controlling for prior achievement, parental education, and school characteristics. The data point to intensified within-school segregation, where academic opportunity is rationed according to both economic capital and racialized perceptions of merit.

Conclusion
The findings reveal a clear mismatch between school performance metrics and equitable access. Gentrification may lift a school's overall profile, but it does so unevenly—often reproducing historical patterns of exclusion under the guise of progress. From a stratification economics perspective, these dynamics reflect not isolated policy failures, but predictable outcomes in systems designed to preserve advantage. Addressing this requires more than rezoning or neighborhood investment. It calls for intentional policy tools that target within-school stratification: dismantling gatekeeping mechanisms, eliminating exclusionary course placement practices, and instituting equity audits tied to resource allocation. Without these steps, gentrification will remain a process that displaces not just families, but educational opportunity itself.

Author

• Elizabeth Iris Rivera, Montclair State University
  Presenting Author