There Goes the Neighborhood (Theory)

Jay Mathews in the Washington Post takes note of two new studies that just might discredit the idea that neighborhood and culture play a part in the success or failure of a student in school.

Many social reformers have long said that low academic achievement among inner-city children cannot be improved significantly without moving their families to better neighborhoods, but new reports released today that draw on a unique set of data throw cold water on that theory.

Researchers examining what happened to 4,248 families that were randomly given or denied federal housing vouchers to move out of their high-poverty neighborhoods found no significant difference about seven years later between the achievement of children who moved to more middle-class neighborhoods and those who didn't.

Although some children had more stable lives and better academic results after the moves, the researchers said, on average there was no improvement. Boys and brighter students appeared to have more behavioral problems in their new schools, the studies found.

"Research has in fact found surprisingly little convincing evidence that neighborhoods play a key role in children's educational success," says one of the two reports on the Web site of the Hoover Institution's journal Education Next.

Experts often debate the factors in student achievement. Many point to teacher quality, others to parental involvement and others to economic and cultural issues.

Researchers looked a families that were offered or denied a federal housing voucher under the Moving to Opportunity program. The housing vouchers were to be used by the families to move to neighborhoods where the poverty level was less than 10%. One critique of the studies and the housing voucher program is that families with the voucher were unable, due to cost, to move to the more affluent suburbs were the schools tend to be the strongest.

The studies' authors note that even if the poor families with the vouches did not move back to their old neighborhoods (as a large number of them did), their new neighborhoods increased in poverty during the period of the study. Education Next has a summary of one of the studies.

If the physical surroundings outside of the home play little or no role in the educational outcomes, what does. Well, I still think that the immediate family plays a role. There are too many stories about poor kids doing well in school because of a strong parental presence in their life that valued education.

But perhaps it is time to focus on the factors that schools can control--teacher and principal quality. A recent series of post at Eduwonk, highlight the possiblity that focusing on accountibility/responsibility in school management and the importance of quality teachers highlight some forward thinking about educational reform in urban school districts. Schools cannot make families richer nor move them to better neighborhoods or even make kids take school seriously.

If schools can't do it, neither can the govnerment or any liberal wealth redistribution plan. But what the government and schools can do is make certain that for every child who comes to school has high quality, motivated teachers, capable administrators with the flexibility to meet the demands and needs of their customers (students) and the materials to learn. In the end, a high quality education should be available, but nothing the government can do can make a student or their family reach out and take advantage of it--that is a matter of personal choice.