IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v94y2023ics0272775723000298.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Turning around schools (and neighborhoods?): School improvement grants and gentrification

Author

Listed:
  • Friday, Cameron
  • Smith, Tucker

Abstract

Most funding intended to close gaps in K-12 education targets schools, rather than students directly. We investigate whether household sorting in response to changes in K-12 school funding inhibits spending from reaching targeted students with a case study in Metro-Nashville Public Schools of the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, which invested $7 billion in the nation’s lowest-achieving schools between 2009 and 2016. Using a boundary-discontinuity difference-in-differences design and home sales data, we estimate that households were willing to pay more than three times the average per-pupil grant award to live in SIG school zones. Neighborhoods zoned for SIG schools experienced moderate income and racial integration following funding receipt. However, evictions in these neighborhoods increased by 35%, and non-white enrollment at SIG schools declined by 15%. Our findings illustrate a major limitation of place-based public good provision: sorting may displace the initially targeted population.

Suggested Citation

  • Friday, Cameron & Smith, Tucker, 2023. "Turning around schools (and neighborhoods?): School improvement grants and gentrification," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:94:y:2023:i:c:s0272775723000298
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102382
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775723000298
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102382?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Educational finance; School segregation; Place-based policy; Local public finance; Gentrification; Neighborhood schools;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:94:y:2023:i:c:s0272775723000298. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.