The Distance to Opportunity: Investigating Place Disparities in Student Achievement Growth

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 20. School Dynamics: Behavior, Achievement, and Discipline

Abstract

While school context is a good starting place for better understanding inequality in educational achievement and attainment, it is essential to think beyond the classroom and school doors when trying to understand the myriad ways in which where children live and go to school affect their life trajectory. This idea is not new or novel; other researchers have focused on place as urban location (Roscigno, Tomaskovic-Devey, and Crowley 2006), explored the essential intersection of schools and neighborhoods (Rich and Owens 2023), and demonstrated how economic opportunity structure influences identity formation within schools (Morris 2012). This research lays the foundation for the current study by conceptualizing how where a child lives and the context of that place affects educational outcomes. The elements of place and the context of schools do not exist in a vacuum, however. The ways that individuals move through institutions like schools is dependent, in part, on the interaction between the individual and the context and structure of the institution (Langenkamp 2010, 2017). Extrapolating to place, the effect that a community has on an individual or group likely hinges on the characteristics of place.

Drawing from interdisciplinary theoretical understandings of place, this paper uses administrative records from over a decade from the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) to explore how place and changes in place over time affect educational outcomes, with a particular focus on rural students. First, we ask whether there are achievement differences within the school location categories. Second, we investigate which facets of place mediate these differences. Expanding educational research to incorporate place will help uncover the nuance involved in educational inequality as it relates to place.

Authors

• Amy Gill Langenkamp, University of Notre Dame

• Hannah Petersen, University of Notre Dame