A Geospatial Analysis of the Bonds Between Neighborhoods and Their Schools

• In Event: 46.085 - Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: 46.085-4 - Community Ownership in School Spaces

Abstract

Neighborhoods provide one of the most important units of analysis for social outcomes. Beyond determining access to opportunity, locality and the conditions of that space influence social interactions and community cohesion in ways that determine the local structures that come to hinder or propel an individual’s life outcomes. This quantitative geostatistical study maps census and community variables against school-level survey and outcomes data and demonstrates that neighborhood effects, including collective efficacy, significantly correlate with educational outcomes at local schools. The results of this analysis have immense policy implications in an age of school choice education reforms that are increasingly breaking the bonds of neighborhood and school.

Author

• Ryan Coughlan, Rutgers University