Neighbourhood change and the neighbourhood-school gap

Abstract

Few studies examine how school and neighbourhood composition in the US correspond over time, particularly in a context of neighbourhood change. As neighbourhoods diversify along racial and economic lines, do public schools also diversify or grow increasingly dissimilar from their surrounding areas? Drawing on novel data linking neighbourhoods and schools in the US in 2000 and 2010, I document: how racial composition corresponds over time between traditional public schools and the neighbourhoods they serve; how the compositional gap changes when greater school choice is available; and how the compositional gap varies between neighbourhoods experiencing various trajectories of socioeconomic change. I find an increasing mismatch in the white composition of public schools and their surrounding neighbourhoods, specifically that schools enrol fewer white students than the composition of the neighbourhood. The compositional mismatch grows the most in neighbourhoods experiencing socioeconomic ascent, particularly as the number of nearby non-neighbourhood schools increases.