Shuttering Chocolate City: Gentrification and School Closure Decisions in Washington, D.C.

• In Event: 58.032 - Contemporary Public School Closure in the United States

Abstract

Mass school closures in lower-income communities of color are now a fixture of the urban education landscape. We can also readily observe processes of gentrification that are fundamentally reshaping the demographic and spatial dimensions of cities nationwide. While researchers have begun to show that affluent and typically White families now enrolling in city schools can both foster and inhibit educational equity (Cucchiara & Horvat, 2009; Posey-Maddox, 2014), the relationship between school closures and gentrification is less clear. In this study I look to recent events in the rapidly changing city of Washington D.C. to better understand the role of gentrification in the school closure decision-making process. Focusing on the 2012-2013 school year when district officials proposed the closure of 20 schools, I weave together discourse analysis of testimony from public hearings, interviews with parents and community members, official reports, and demographic and school-level data to demonstrate how community members and local leaders deploy gentrification as both an asset and a threat to defending schools against potential closure. We find that those school communities undergoing the greatest demographic change were able to invoke gentrification as an asset in improving schools through increased enrollment and parental investment, and were eventually taken off the closure list. But those communities that held the school system responsible for school conditions and who saw gentrification as a threat were unsuccessful in their bids to save their schools. The paper cautions policymakers and education leaders who view gentrification as a school improvement strategy by highlighting inequities in school closure decisions and outcomes.

Author

• Esa Syeed, California State University - Long Beach