Assessing Neighborhood Racial Segregation and Macroeconomic Effects in the Education of African Americans

Abstract

The “underclass” debate of the 1980s often concerned the relative importance of neighborhood racial and economic isolation to the educational challenges facing many African Americans. This review organizes the neighborhood effects research that has emerged since that time according to these differing perspectives. The review’s triangulated approach assesses (a) the association of a neighborhood’s racial segregation and low level of economic resources to less academic success, (b) whether certain neighborhood social processes lower children’s educational performance, and (c) if residential opportunity leads to improvements in educational performance after children leave impoverished and segregated neighborhoods for integrated and middle-class areas. The analysis reveals that the education of African Americans appears less affected by neighborhood conditions than the two perspectives suggest, at least as they are currently conceptualized and measured. The results are contextualized with the author’s identification of areas in the field where more research is needed, the problems and promise associated with particular analytical strategies, and other social, school-based, and human development dynamics that complicate the estimation of neighborhood influences in education.