There Goes the Neighborhood School: Towards an Understanding of the Effects of Gentrification on Public Schools

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

There Goes the Neighborhood School: Towards an Understanding of the Effects of Gentrification on Public Schools

Gentrification has transformed the physical, cultural, and demographic landscape of cities across the United States. As middle-class families—or parent gentrifiers—increasingly enroll their children in and invest in urban schools, researchers across disciplines have posed questions to investigate the transformative promises and challenges of gentrification for urban schools. This poster presents findings from a larger qualitative study of gentrification’s impact on the culture and social context of urban schools. Drawing on a multisite case study of three elementary schools in Washington, D.C., this study seeks to investigate how schools’ cultural contexts influence how educators respond to the process of school gentrification and how school gentrification shapes the politics of school family relations. Interviews with educators, school administrators, and parents reveal that a school’s culture – established by school leaders – influences how the process of school gentrification unfolds. Although school gentrification can alter power dynamics within schools, school leaders and educators used several strategies to resist or mitigate the marginalizing effects of school gentrification and center equity in their schools. The findings from this study suggest the importance of understanding schools’ context in promoting the conditions for school gentrification and mitigating the marginalizing effects of the process.

Author

• Alisha Butler, University of Maryland