Gentrifying Neighborhoods Open Opportunities for School Integration
BY KFIR MORDECHAY AND ALLISON RODA/School Administrator, April 2022

Kfir Mordechay

With more white and middle- and upper-class families opting to settle in urban centers over the past generation, gentrification has transformed many American urban neighborhoods and public schools.

Historically, gentrification has been a modest force of urban change, largely driven by avant-garde artists and concentrated in a small number of neighborhoods in cities such as New York and San Francisco. In recent decades, however, the breadth and scope of gentrification has accelerated far beyond these two cities, growing faster than researchers’ ability to track it.

In a forthcoming study of California cities by the UCLA Civil Rights Project, researchers found gentrification to be widespread across various metropolitan areas of different sizes. This phenomenon is not limited to California. According to another analysis by Governing magazine, nearly 20 percent of low-income neighborhoods in the country’s 50 biggest cities have undergone gentrification since 2000. With record-low housing inventory and soaring prices spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, these trends are sure to have accelerated.

A Proactive Possibility

Gentrification and its effects on surrounding neighborhoods have provoked considerable controversy, mainly surrounding the transformation of the housing market and the potential displacement of long-term residents. But how has growing neighborhood gentrification affected the integration of schools?

We argue that when school leaders and educators respond to gentrification in proactive, sustainable and culturally responsive ways, gentrification can be a catalyst for integration.

Decades of research indicate school integration can benefit all children across a variety of short- and long-term outcomes. Integrated schools prepare children as global citizens, enhance students’ learning, expand their future opportunities, reduce prejudice and promote much-needed social cohesion.

Yet most research on gentrification and schools has painted a negative story for the potential of school integration. When gentrifiers with children move into historically low-income, Black and Latinx neighborhoods, they often opt out of their local neighborhood schools for private, charter or other choice schools. This creates a mismatch between neighborhood and local school demographics, affecting school resources and reputations. Meanwhile, when gentrifiers opt into local schools, studies have shown they tend to overrun the school with their involvement, efforts that can exclude long-standing families and children of color. 

Allison Roda

In gentrifying communities, school leaders often market their schools to gentrifiers by offering exclusive programming (such as gifted or foreign language programs) or other upgrades they believe this group of parents value. While such incentives are powerful and may attract and retain gentrifiers, they sometimes do so at the expense of families of color — resulting in fleeting integration followed by resegregation.

Careful Promotion

Our research has shown that stable integration can happen within the context of gentrification. Incoming parents can advocate for extra resources and improvements, potentially raising expectations and achievement for all students. School leaders and teachers can act as critical intermediaries that attend to power dynamics among different groups of families. This intentional work must be done thoughtfully to ensure gentrifiers do not engage in exclusionary behaviors that might “hoard” opportunities.

Teachers and administrators can carefully craft marketing and recruitment practices with stable diversity as the goal. They can create school cultures that facilitate equal status interactions among students and families from different backgrounds. Educators can include parents and students of color as school ambassadors, assisting with outreach to underserved communities and facilitating admissions procedures that promote relationship building.

At the same time, school leaders can hold the line when parents ask for exclusive programs or services that are not aligned with the school integration mission. Lastly, professional development for administrators, teachers and parents can prepare them for the tensions likely to surface in gentrifying schools.

There’s no denying that gentrification will continue to impact urban public schools. It’s up to district, school and community stakeholders to collaboratively and intentionally create opportunities for integration when demographics shift.

KFIR MORDECHAY is an assistant professor of education at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles, Calif., and a research fellow with the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. Twitter: @kfir_mordechay. ALLISON RODA is an assistant professor of education at Molloy College in Rockville Centre, N.Y.