Switching Social Contexts: the Effects of Housing Mobility and School Choice Programs on Youth Outcomes

ANRV381-SO35-22 ARI 5 June 2009 9:33 Switching Social Contexts: The Effects of Housing Mobility and School Choice Programs on Youth Outcomes Stefanie DeLuca and Elizabeth Dayton Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218; email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009. 35:457–91 Key Words First published online as a Review in Advance on neighborhoods, education, social policy, inequality April 16, 2009 The Annual Review of Sociology is online at Abstract soc.annualreviews.org Despite years of research, methodological and practical obstacles make This article’s doi: it difficult to conclude whether policies aimed at improving schools 10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-120032 and communities are effective for improving youth outcomes. Tocom- Copyright c 2009 by Annual Reviews. plement existing work, we assess research on the educational and so- All rights reserved cial outcomes for comparable youth who change school and neigh- 0360-0572/09/0811-0457$20.00 borhood settings through unique housing policy and school voucher programs. Research shows that housing programs have helped poor by Dr, Stefanie DeLuca on 07/24/09. For personal use only. families move to much safer, less disadvantaged, and less segregated neighborhoods. Some housing programs have also provided early educational benefits for young people who relocated to less poor and less Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:457-491. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org segregated neighborhoods, but these gains were not maintained in the long run. School voucher programs have helped disadvantaged youth attend higher-performing private schools in less segregated environments with more middle-class peers. Although some voucher programs have shown small positive effects, the results of others are less certain owing to methodological weaknesses. Future research should directly examine families’ selection processes and be cautious with quantitative research that uses naturally occurring variation to model the effects of potential social programs. Researchers should also recognize the family processes that interact with social policy to determine how youth development can be improved, alongside the structural and political processes that condition how programs work at a larger scale. 457 ANRV381-SO35-22 ARI 5 June 2009 9:33 Bronfenbrenner, if you want to understand neighborhoods they inhabit. Often, disadvan- something, try to change it. taged families are trapped in poor neighbor- —Urie Bronfenbrenner, quoting a mentor in hoods, and their children are trapped in low- American Psychologist, 1977 performing schools (Massey & Denton 1993, South & Crowder 1997, South & Deane 1993). Therefore, we do not often get the chance to INTRODUCTION observe how a more advantaged environment Neighborhoods and schools are important con- might affect their life chances. Second, families texts for the socialization and development of choose neighborhoods and schools—they are young people as well as sites where the mech- not randomly distributed across social settings. anisms of opportunity and inequality operate. This endogeneity or selection problem plagues Both schools and communities have also be- attempts to recover causal estimates in research come the focus of many recent policy discus- using observational designs to study environ- sions. Residential mobility, school mobility, and mental effects because the characteristics and housing policy garnered national attention af- dynamics of families that lead them to choose ter the hurricane disaster in New Orleans, and social settings (albeit among a set of constrained HOPE VI demolitions (the largest federal ur- alternatives) may also affect their children’sout- ban revitalization effort to date) are leading comes (Manski 1995, Moffitt 2004, Winship & to the relocation of poor families in cities all Morgan 1999). over the country. School accountability, test Fortunately, there have been some unique score gaps between white and minority stu- opportunities to study what happens when dents, and choice programs are central to the children experience moderate to radical No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, and changes in their schooling or neighborhood federal courts have recently considered whether environments, by virtue of external social and to mandate or overturn racial or socioeconomic political forces. For example, government integration in housing and school settings.1 or privately funded interventions such as These contexts have been of central interest school choice vouchers and housing mobility to social scientists, and multiple Annual Reviews programs attempt to redistribute opportu- have assessed literature on the effects of schools nity by allowing individuals the chance to and neighborhoods on the lives of young peo- change contexts. Other research opportuni- ple (Arum 2000, Hallinan 1988, Sampson et al. ties come from historical efforts to satisfy 2002, Small & Newman 2001). court-mandated remedies, such as school and by Dr, Stefanie DeLuca on 07/24/09. For personal use only. As noted in these reviews and elsewhere, de- housing desegregation programs, which may spite years of research on the developmental ef- allow for new opportunities through systemic fects of social contexts, we do not know defini- change and individual mobility. Still others Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2009.35:457-491. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org tively how neighborhood and school changes are a combination of interventions and social or some combination of both could be used as science experiments, such as school choice effective policy levers to improve youth well- voucher lotteries and the federal Moving to being. This is due in large part to two related Opportunity (MTO) housing experiment. issues. First, despite relatively high levels of These programs and accompanying evalua- residential mobility in the United States, we tion research vary in design, methodological see little variation in the types of schools that rigor, “treatments,” and policy relevance. To low-income minority children attend and the complement existing work, we assess research specifically focusing on outcomes for youth who have changed school and neighborhood 1 Thompson v. Department of Housing and Urban Development settings through housing policy programs (95–309) (Baltimore, MD); Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (05–908); and Meredith and under certain types of school voucher v. Jefferson County Board (05–915). initiatives. We do not address theories of how 458 DeLuca · Dayton ANRV381-SO35-22 ARI 5 June 2009 9:33 neighborhoods and schools matter for child and poverty, unemployment, and violence, pre- adolescent development, as this has been done dict youth outcomes such as high school extensively elsewhere (see Bowles & Gintis dropout (Aaronson 1998, Crane 1991, Crowder 1976; Brooks-Gunn et al. 1997a,b; Dreeben & South 2003), teenage childbearing (Crane 1968; Hallinan et al. 2003; Sampson et al. 2002). 1991, Ensminger et al. 1996), sexual activ- ity (Browning et al. 2004), behavioral prob- lems (Brooks-Gunn et al. 1993, Elliott et al. THE EFFECTS OF 1996), and drug use (Case & Katz 1991). NEIGHBORHOODS AND Poor neighborhoods also appear to dimin- SCHOOLS ON YOUTH ish educational attainment and other adoles- DEVELOPMENT cent outcomes in part through lower levels Over the past 40 years, social scientists have of positive adult socialization and collective been interested in the effects of social con- efficacy (Ainsworth 2002, Card & Rothstein texts and how they help explain unequal life 2007, Connell & Halpern-Fisher 1997, Garner outcomes. Analyses of school and neighbor- & Raudenbush 1991, Sampson et al. 2008). hood effects have become increasingly pop- Neighborhoods can also factor into youth ex- ular among researchers, in part because em- pectations about work, drug use, and col- pirical demonstrations that link social contexts lege attendance (Lillard 1993, MacLeod 1987, to educational and life course attainment sig- Sullivan 1989). Furthermore, recent research nify the possibility for policy to intervene in has begun to link disadvantaged neighbor- these contexts. Understanding the significance hoods with diminished health outcomes (cf. of social environments has an inherent ap- Acevedo-Garcia et al. 2003, Aneshensel & peal relative to individual-level explanations for Sucoff 1996). inequality (such as cultural dispositions and Despite extensive evidence linking neigh- intelligence), and efforts to examine the impor- borhoods and youth development, most re- tance of individual versus environmental fac- search still finds that family background mat- tors have inspired a great deal of scientific and ters more than neighborhoods (Brooks-Gunn political debate [for examples, refer to the de- et al. 1997a,b; Sampson et al. 2002). However, bate around Herrnstein & Murray’s The Bell neighborhoods can affect family resources be- Curve (1994) in Fischer et al. (1996) and Vol- cause residential location affects the number ume 24 (1995) of Contemporary Sociology; see and types of jobs available for parents (Holzer also reviews of the research challenges and 1991, Ihlanfeldt & Sjoquist 1998, McLafferty by Dr, Stefanie DeLuca on 07/24/09. For personal use only. politics surrounding the structure and culture & Preston 1992). Recent ethnographic work debate as it pertains to the study of the un- has also suggested that neighborhoods might derclass in Jencks 1993, Marks 1991, Small & affect the outcomes of young people by in-

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