Exam 3 | Urban Schools and Communities

Cards (73)

  • Magnet schools

    Public schools with specialized curricula, draw students (like a magnet) from across the city/district
  • Magnet schools

    Introduced as a way to voluntarily integrate schools – use parent choice as a mechanism to increase racial diversity
  • Magnet school admission criteria
    • Open to all who apply
    • Selected via lottery
    • Selected via criteria-based admissions (e.g., exam)
  • Exam/criteria-based schools

    Specific type of magnet school in which admission is determined based on specific criteria, which may include in some cases an entrance exam
  • Exam/criteria-based schools

    • Tend to be highly selective and competitive
    • The choice in these schools is not being made by students and families but by the schools, which use methods very strongly linked to the advantages in preparation enjoyed by students from more educated and more affluent families and neighborhoods
  • Admissions policies that rely heavily on exam scores = example of "color-blind" policy -> allocates scarce resource on basis of seemingly race-neutral measures of merit -> without acknowledging impact of systemic discrimination/disadvantage
  • There are about 165 exam-based schools in 30 states in the U.S. in 2012
  • Exam schools

    Some are extremely prestigious, regularly send graduates to Ivy League & other top colleges & universities
  • NYC has 8 such exam schools (e.g., Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Latin, Brooklyn Tech, Queens High School for the Sciences at York); admissions are highly competitive
  • Students take a single day entrance exam, must get a minimum score to be considered for NYC exam schools
  • Out of 600 middle schools in NYC, 10 schools alone (1.6%) account for 25% of the offers extended to 8th graders to attend one of the exam schools; those schools are disproportionately white & Asian in a school district that is more than 2/3 Black & Hispanic
  • 18% of SHSAT test-takers in NYC were white, and 30% were Asian. Yet Asian test-takers earned just over half of all offers to the specialized schools and white students received 29% of the offers. While 24% of test-takers were Hispanic and 20% were black, those students together earned just over 10% of admissions offers
  • City Honors in Buffalo is consistently ranked one of the top high schools in the country
  • Admissions to City Honors begin in 5th grade
  • Families will often send children to private or suburban schools until ready to take the test, then move to Buffalo if children get in
  • In 2014, a group of Buffalo parents filed a lawsuit with the Office of Civil Rights (in DOE), arguing that the district's admissions criteria disproportionately excluded non-White students from the 8 criteria-based schools
  • Meritocracy
    The notion that rewards/spots are assigned based on talent, effort, achievement, and performance (versus social class, elite status, etc.)
  • Colorblind policy

    Policies that are race-neutral on their face (i.e., do not give advantages to one group over another) -> unequal outcomes are thus attributed to the failures of the individual or the group (cultural practices, lack of effort, etc.); ignore systemic disadvantages
  • Barriers to accessing criteria-based schools in Buffalo

    • Information (disparate outreach & recruitment; inadequate info, especially in other languages; complex/unclear process)
    • Preparation (disparate prep in elementary school; G&T pipeline; better acceptance rates for students in earlier criteria & charter schools)
    • Admissions criteria (cognitive skills test; state ELA/math tests; parent and teacher recommendations)
    • Lack of support services (ELLs; special ed)
    • Availability of choices (limited number of schools & seats; high demand)
  • Gentrification
    A process by which higher income households displace lower income residents of a neighborhood, changing the essential character of the neighborhood
  • Key features of gentrification

    • Involuntary displacement of original residents
    • Physical upgrading of the neighborhood (especially housing)
    • Change in the neighborhood character
  • Factors contributing to gentrification

    • Neighborhood incomes in bottom quarter-to-half of the income distribution in the metropolitan area
    • Job growth
    • Tight housing markets with limited supply
    • Relative affordability (comparatively low housing prices) -> big investment potential
    • High proportion of renters and large "rent gap"
    • Proximity to city amenities
    • High architectural value in existing housing stock (search for "authenticity")
    • Public sector policies (tax incentives, zoning regulations, etc.)
  • Stages of the gentrification process

    • Initial newcomers/ "pioneers" buy & rehab vacant units
    • Knowledge of & interest in the neighborhood spreads
    • Area starts to become widely known as 'hot'
    • Mature gentrification
  • Consequences of gentrification

    • Displacement of low-income residents
    • Increased property taxes can be problematic for low-income residents, especially those on a fixed income
    • Increased rents
    • Increasing real estate values & equity for owners
    • Increasing tax revenue for city
    • Greater income mix/deconcentration of poverty
    • Changing community leadership, institutions, amenities
    • Conflicts between old and new residents
  • The presence of school choice (e.g., magnet schools, charter schools, etc.) may set the stage for neighborhood gentrification by giving middle-class / affluent families options other than the neighborhood schools, thus removing one of the biggest fears about or obstacles to moving into a disadvantaged neighborhood
  • If gentrifiers do NOT send their kids to local schools, then gentrification may have little to no effect on those schools
  • School gentrification

    1. Increased numbers of middle-class families
    2. Noticeable upgrades to schools (new facilities, programs, resources, improvements)
    3. Forms of exclusion and/or marginalization of low-income students and families (in terms of enrollments, social relations, power)
    4. Changes in school climate, culture (e.g., traditions, expectations, etc.)
  • As these schools develop a "better" reputation and wealthier families seek to enroll their children, they become significantly harder for low-income students to access because seats are limited
  • The "Center City Schools Initiative" in Philadelphia saw the city "marketing" a subset of schools to more affluent families, treating the schools as an amenity (like high-end restaurants or boutiques) targeted at them
  • The extra attention given to these families sent the message that certain families are "valued" more than others, resulting in a large influx of resources into the few schools the middle-class kids attended, but didn't do anything for the other (most) schools in the district
  • Over time, many public housing projects became infamous for their concentration of social ills (crime, violence, vandalism, high levels of poverty, etc.)
  • In the early 1990s - 2010, there was a major change in the way that the government handled low-income housing: Shift from development-based housing to meeting housing needs in the private market
  • The demolition of "severely distressed" public housing projects and replacement with mixed-income housing aimed to decrease highly concentrated poverty and create more integrated neighborhoods, but did not result in a 1:1 replacement of demolished units with new units
  • Many (if not most) dispersed public housing residents now use vouchers (subsidized rent) to find housing in the private rental market
  • Rather than trying to improve low-quality schools, the focus should be on moving low-income families into higher quality neighborhoods so they can access higher quality schools
  • The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment in the mid-1990s found that moving low-income families to better neighborhoods can improve their well-being (e.g., employment, education, health, etc.)
  • Rather than trying to improve low-quality schools, focus on moving low-income families into higher quality neighborhoods so they can access higher quality schools
  • Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment

    Very important study of residential mobility and individual outcomes in several large U.S. cities in mid-1990s
  • MTO
    Large, federally-funded program that moved people living in high-poverty, public housing into low-poverty neighborhoods through the use of vouchers (subsidized rent in the private market)
  • Families randomly assigned to 3 groups

    • Voucher to pay for rent in low-poverty neighborhood + counseling, assistance in the rental search
    • Voucher that could be used anywhere
    • Control group (no change; stayed where they were)