urban education and neighborhood revitalization

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URBAN EDUCATION AND NEIGHBORHOOD REVITALIZATION KELLY L. PATTERSON University at Buffalo ROBERT MARK SILVERMAN University at Buffalo Analyses of urban education reform and neighborhood revitalization are often divorced from one another. Yet, in cities across the United States, neighborhood decline and the demise of public education often occur in conjunction. Anecdotal evidence suggests that efforts to revitalize neighborhoods are hampered by perceptions of underperforming schools. According to this narrative, a vicious cycle is produced where cities are unable to sustain their housing stock and related tax bases, a situation which subsequently contributes to the weakening of schools that depend on municipal resources to deliver quality educational programs. At the same time, students who attend schools in declining neighborhoods are perceived as suffering from exposure to risks they encounter in the decaying built and social environments of inner-city neighborhoods. Although this narrative has become engrained in popular mythology, there is limited empirical analysis focused on the nexus between urban school reform and neighborhood revitalization. An exception is Varady and Raffel’s (2010) work focused on the role urban education and housing programs have in retaining middle-class homeowners in central cities. Their work represents one aspect of a multifaceted framework for examining the nexus between schools and neighborhoods. There is need for further development of this line of inquiry. This special issue was conceived to begin the process of filling this gap in urban research and stimulate discussion about schools and neighborhoods. It examines a variety of approaches to urban public policy focused on education and urban revitalization and offers theoretical, methodological, and empirical insights into this important area of inquiry. The analysis of schools and neighborhoods is highly salient in the contemporary period. Much of this interest has been driven by federal legislation. One pivotal piece of legislation influencing schools and neighborhoods was the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). This Act, introduced by the Bush Administration, linked eligibility for federal education aid to students’ performance on standardized tests. NCLB also created a framework for reorganizing schools that failed to meet performance targets on standardized tests. Options included closing schools, turning them into charter schools, requiring state education departments to take over and manage Direct correspondence to: Kelly L. Patterson, School of Social Work, University at Buffalo, 663 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. E-mail: [email protected]; or Robert Mark Silverman, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University at Buffalo, 114 Diefendorf Hall, Buffalo, NY 14214. E-mail: [email protected]. JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Volume 35, Number 1, pages 1–5. Copyright C 2013 Urban Affairs Association All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0735-2166. DOI: 10.1111/juaf.12006

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Page 1: URBAN EDUCATION AND NEIGHBORHOOD REVITALIZATION

URBAN EDUCATION AND NEIGHBORHOODREVITALIZATION

KELLY L. PATTERSONUniversity at Buffalo

ROBERT MARK SILVERMANUniversity at Buffalo

Analyses of urban education reform and neighborhood revitalization are often divorced fromone another. Yet, in cities across the United States, neighborhood decline and the demise ofpublic education often occur in conjunction. Anecdotal evidence suggests that efforts to revitalizeneighborhoods are hampered by perceptions of underperforming schools. According to thisnarrative, a vicious cycle is produced where cities are unable to sustain their housing stock andrelated tax bases, a situation which subsequently contributes to the weakening of schools thatdepend on municipal resources to deliver quality educational programs. At the same time, studentswho attend schools in declining neighborhoods are perceived as suffering from exposure to risksthey encounter in the decaying built and social environments of inner-city neighborhoods.

Although this narrative has become engrained in popular mythology, there is limited empiricalanalysis focused on the nexus between urban school reform and neighborhood revitalization. Anexception is Varady and Raffel’s (2010) work focused on the role urban education and housingprograms have in retaining middle-class homeowners in central cities. Their work represents oneaspect of a multifaceted framework for examining the nexus between schools and neighborhoods.There is need for further development of this line of inquiry. This special issue was conceived tobegin the process of filling this gap in urban research and stimulate discussion about schools andneighborhoods. It examines a variety of approaches to urban public policy focused on educationand urban revitalization and offers theoretical, methodological, and empirical insights into thisimportant area of inquiry.

The analysis of schools and neighborhoods is highly salient in the contemporary period. Muchof this interest has been driven by federal legislation. One pivotal piece of legislation influencingschools and neighborhoods was the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). This Act,introduced by the Bush Administration, linked eligibility for federal education aid to students’performance on standardized tests. NCLB also created a framework for reorganizing schoolsthat failed to meet performance targets on standardized tests. Options included closing schools,turning them into charter schools, requiring state education departments to take over and manage

Direct correspondence to: Kelly L. Patterson, School of Social Work, University at Buffalo, 663 Baldy Hall, Buffalo,NY 14260, USA. E-mail: [email protected]; or Robert Mark Silverman, Department of Urban and Regional Planning,University at Buffalo, 114 Diefendorf Hall, Buffalo, NY 14214. E-mail: [email protected].

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Volume 35, Number 1, pages 1–5.Copyright C© 2013 Urban Affairs AssociationAll rights of reproduction in any form reserved.ISSN: 0735-2166. DOI: 10.1111/juaf.12006

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schools, and contracting with private education management organizations to run failing schools.Performance standards and remedies to address failing schools implemented under NCLB havebeen the subject of heated debate (Ravitch, 2011). However, much of the structure of NCLB hasformed the backbone of recent federal efforts to reform public education and revitalize urbanneighborhoods.

In 2009, the Obama Administration announced a new competitive grant program for publicschools called Race to the Top (RTTT). This U.S. Department of Education (DOE) program madeover $4.3 billion in funding available to states to promote school reform. Many of the criteriato receive RTTT funds were linked to performance measures that were introduced with NCLB.In addition, other measures of teaching innovation and curriculum reform became part of theRTTT funding criteria. Like NCLB, eligibility for federal funding under RTTT was linked tostudents’ performance on standardized tests, as well as teacher evaluations and school districtpolicies. RTTT also continued to recommend remedies for turning around failing schools thatwere consistent with NCLB.

Some ramifications of NCLB and RTTT include increased incentives for states to link schoolfunding to quantifiable measures of student and teacher performance. Others include increasedincentives to pass state enabling legislation for the creation of charter schools, the private manage-ment of public schools, and the lifting of caps on the number of charter schools allowed in states.

In 2010, the Obama Administration stepped up efforts to develop comprehensive programsaimed at reforming public education and revitalizing neighborhoods. One of these efforts was thePromise Neighborhoods (PN) demonstration program administered through the DOE. This pro-gram was modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), a nonprofit run by Geoffrey Canadathat offers comprehensive educational and social service programs to inner-city students. Basedon the HCZ model, whose success is dependent on leveraging philanthropic dollars to supportcharter schools, PN is designed to use federal funds to leverage comprehensive neighborhood-based educational and social service programming for disadvantaged youth.

In addition to PN, the Obama Administration also introduced the Choice Neighborhoods (CN)demonstration program in 2010. This program is administered through the U.S. Department ofHousing and Urban Development (HUD). It is designed to link revitalization of public housing(particularly mixed income development following the HOPE VI model) with comprehensivesocial service and educational programming.

Together, PN and CN make up a core component of the Obama Administration’s inner-cityrevitalization policy. In many respects, the focus of this policy conforms to past efforts torevitalize urban neighborhoods, which focused on reducing housing density, developing mixed-income neighborhoods, and poverty deconcentration. However, this policy goes a step further bystrengthening the link between schools and neighborhoods. It also places greater emphasis ondelivering comprehensive social services in poor communities through increased collaborationbetween the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

It is noteworthy that the overarching emphasis of current policy has been on shifting theimplementation of educational and housing programs from the public sector to the private andnonprofit sectors. This has been the thrust of NCLB and RTTT, where turnaround strategiesfor failing schools have promoted the creation of charter schools and the use of educationalmanagement organizations. These policies, in part, have contributed to the privatization andnonprofitization of urban schools across the country (Fabricant & Fine, 2012; Silverman, 2012).In a similar vein, PN’s efforts to replicate the HCZ model have placed nonprofits and philanthropicorganizations at the center of the dialogue about education reform and neighborhood revitalization.Likewise, CN represents a continuation of HUD’s use of mixed financing for public housing.This model allows HUD to combine public, private, and nonprofit funds to build and manageaffordable housing developments.

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This emphasis is in stark contrast to earlier urban revitalization programs rooted in calls byscholars and practitioners to empower inner-city residents and enhance their control of publicinstitutions (Blauner, 1972; Needleman & Needleman, 1974; Kotler, 2005). Instead, controlof education and neighborhood revitalization policies are increasingly pulled out of the publicdomain and embedded in private and nonprofit institutions. Although these policies focus onsystemic problems faced by urban minority communities, they are often debated and formulatedat the national level, far removed from grassroots constituencies. This results in private interestsand large philanthropic organizations having greater influence over policy. Consequently, theparadigm that these interests operate from sets the parameters for education and neighborhoodpolicy in a relative vacuum. This paradigm emphasizes decoupling urban policy from publicagencies and implementing it through private and nonprofit organizations that are less accountableto residents of disenfranchised communities. The scope of community control, participation, andinput is less pronounced in the policy formulation and implementation processes.

The purpose of this special issue is to expand critical analysis and scholarly debate about thenexus between urban education and neighborhood revitalization. There was an overwhelmingresponse to the call for papers for this special issue, with over 90 abstracts submitted. Weselected a sample of those abstracts that reflects the scope of analysis in this area of inquiryand represents core conceptual and methodological approaches. The articles in this special issueinclude theoretical contributions to the study of schools and neighborhoods that are informedby policy and practice. They also draw from a broad spectrum of methodological approachesincluding case studies, qualitative analysis, and quantitative research.

An overarching theme that ties all of the articles together is the focus on education reform andneighborhood revitalization in the context of distressed urban, majority–minority communities.This is a critical focal point since educational reforms like NCLB and RTTT are predominantlyfocused on addressing perceived deficiencies in urban, majority–minority school districts. Thisis even more evident in relation to the PN and CN programs, which focus on transformingdistressed urban schools and neighborhoods. As a result, the theoretical, methodological, andpolicy implications of this special issue have particular relevance to the analysis of disparateoutcomes from urban education and neighborhood revitalization policies, particularly along thelines of race and class.

The first three articles in this special issue demonstrate how theory can inform policy andpractice. The first article, by Jeremy R. Levine and William Julius Wilson, is titled “Poverty,Politics, and A ‘Circle of Promise’: Holistic Education Policy in Boston and the Challenge ofInstitutional Entrenchment.” It critiques the City of Boston’s Circle of Promise initiative, whichis a holistic education policy designed to coordinate school reforms with resources from localcommunity-based organizations. Levine and Wilson apply the concept of institutional entrench-ment to the City’s initiative and explain how the design and implementation of policy is hamperedby preexisting relationships between city departments, the public school system, and nonprofitsin Boston. In particular, they describe how the city identified a litany of existing programs underthe umbrella of the circle of promise in an effort to replicate the HCZ model. However, the city’sefforts fell short of success due to inadequate funding, vague goals, agency fragmentation, pro-gram duplication, poor geographic targeting, and a lack of internal accountability. Their findingsand the application of the concept of institutional entrenchment inform efforts to design andimplement PN and CN program in other cities.

The second article in this special issue provides another example of how theory informs policyand practice. The article by Todd Swanstrom, Will Winter, Margaret Sherraden, and Jessica Lakeis titled “Civic Capacity and School/Community Partnerships in a Fragmented Suburban Setting:The Case of 24:1.” Swanstrom and his coauthors apply a civic capacity framework to the analysisof collaborative efforts to improve schools and neighborhood conditions across 24 inner-ring

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suburbs of St. Louis. They describe the necessity for such collaboration since each suburb byitself lacks the internal capacity to deal with failing schools and neighborhood decline rooted inregional inequality along socioeconomic and racial lines.

In this case study, collaboration among municipalities was facilitated by two factors. First, allof the inner-ring suburbs fell within the boundaries of a single school district. Second, a regionalnonprofit housing organization facilitated neighborhood revitalization efforts across jurisdictions.Swanstrom et al. discuss the growing need for cross-sector, intermunicipal collaboration asproblems, traditionally associated with poor, segregated core cities, proliferate in inner-ringsuburbs. Their analysis enhances our understanding of how the civic capacity framework informsefforts to develop collaborative models for school reform and neighborhood revitalization.

The third article in the special issue provides an international perspective on schools andneighborhoods. “Progressive and Sustained School Reform: Framing and Coalition Building inSwiss Cities” by Philippe Koch applies regime theory to the analysis of the composition of localpolitical coalitions and the ideologies that drive them. Koch identifies three distinct frameworksthat underpin school reform in Swiss cities. One emphasizes social justice and equity, anotherfocuses on the efficiency and effectiveness of educational programs, and the third stresses thewedding of school reform with neoliberal prerogatives. Each framework is sustained by a distinctlocal coalition led by groups in the public, private, and philanthropic sectors. Although Koch’sanalysis is based on research done in Swiss cities, it is applicable to the analysis of urban schoolreform and neighborhood revitalization in the United States and other countries. The frameworkshe identifies are particularly relevant to conditions surrounding the emergence of charter schoolsand other urban education reforms in the contemporary U.S. context.

The next three articles in this special issue build on these theoretical insights and empiricallyanalyze the nexus between school reform and neighborhood revitalization. The fourth article,by Julia Burdick-Will, Micere Keels, and Todd Schuble, “Closing and Opening Schools: TheAssociation Between Neighborhood Characteristics and the Location of New Educational Op-portunities in a Large Urban District,” examines patterns of school change in Chicago. They findthat underperforming and underenrolled public schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods are morelikely to close, while new charter schools are more likely to open in neighborhoods that show signsof socioeconomic revitalization and declining proportions of white residents. Their findings alsosuggest that charter schools with a profit orientation appear to locate in more advantaged neigh-borhoods, while schools with a focus on closing the achievement gap for disadvantaged studentsare more likely to locate in neighborhoods experiencing greater economic distress. Burdick-Willet al. provide additional empirical support for the groundwork laid out in this special issue’searlier articles.

The fifth article in this special issue offers additional empirical evidence that links the natureof school reform to strategies for neighborhood revitalization. This article, by Tomeka Davis andDeirdre Oakley, “Linking Charter School Emergence to Urban Revitalization and Gentrification:A Socio-Spatial Analysis of Three Cities,” examines the relationship between urban revitalization,gentrification, and the opening of charter schools in Atlanta, Chicago, and Philadelphia. In it theyfind evidence to support the link between neighborhood upgrading and charter school formation inAtlanta and Chicago, but less support for such a relationship in Philadelphia. Philadelphia’s schoolreforms are better explained by efforts to improve academic outcomes for poor students. Thesefindings suggest that local context has a discernible influence on how school reforms are framed.

The final article, by Celina Su and Isabelle Jagninski, adds a critical dimension to the analysisof school reform and neighborhood revitalization. “From Toxic Tours to Growing the Grass-roots: Tensions in Critical Pedagogy and Community Development” examines the role thatcurriculum reform and critical pedagogy play in the accomplishment of broader community de-velopment goals. Su and Jagninski examine curricula emphasizing youth participation in New

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Orleans and New York City designed to engage at-risk youth in neighborhood problem solving.This approach to urban education reform is in stark contrast to models based on standardizedtesting and performance measures that have become common under NCLB and RTTT. The au-thors argue that a more holistic approach to education and curriculum is essential if school reformand neighborhood revitalization efforts are going to accomplish broader community developmentgoals and remain relevant to residents of disempowered communities.

The articles in this special issue form a foundation for critically analyzing the nexus betweeneducation reform and neighborhood revitalization in the future. Theoretically and empiricallythey examine schools and neighborhoods in the context of the urban social institutions in whichthey are embedded. We believe this is an essential step to further the analysis of education reformand neighborhood revitalization. The consideration of urban social institutions broadens the scopeof inquiry, moving policy debate beyond the evaluation of students’ performance on standardizedtests and rates of physical redevelopment in neighborhoods. This allows the critical issues ofrace, class, status, political power, and social redistribution to be considered in relation to urbaneducation and neighborhood revitalization.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: We would like to thank the authors of the articles in this special issue for their contri-butions and Laura Reese for her assistance during the conceptualization and preparation of this special issue.

REFERENCES

Blauner, R. (1972). Racial oppression in America. New York: Harper and Row.Fabricant, M., & Fine, M. (2012). Charter schools and the corporate makeover of public education: What’s at

stake. New York: Teacher’s College Press.Kotler, M. (2005). Neighborhood government: The local foundations of political life. Lanham, MD: Lexington

Books.Needleman, M. L., & Needleman, C. E. (1974). Guerrillas in the bureaucracy: The community planning experiment

in the United States. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Ravitch, D. (2011). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining

education. New York: Basic Books.Silverman, R. M. (2012). The nonprofitization of public education: Implications of requiring charter schools to be

nonprofits in New York. Nonprofit Policy Forum, 3(1), 1–22.Varady, D. P., & Raffel, J. A. (2010). Selling cities: Attracting homebuyers through schools and housing programs.

Albany: State University of New York Press.