Before or After the Bell? School Context and Neighborhood Effects on Student Achievement

This working paper was  presented at the 2009 CASBS Summer Workshop "Race and Inequality in Education: Reframing a Research and Policy Agenda for the 21st Century" and later published as a book chapter in Neighborhood and Life Chances: How Place Matters in Modern America (eds Harriet B. Newberger, Eugenie L. Birch, and Susan M Wachter). It was presented at the 2009 CASBS Summer Workshop "Race and Inequality in Education: Reframing a Research and Policy Agenda for the 21st Century."

This paper examines the relative impact of school context versus neighborhood effects on 5th through 8th grade math and reading scores, taking into consideration variations in these effects by race, ethnicity, and other factors. The authors use a longitudinal panel dataset including nearly 10 million students from the State of Texas compiled by the Texas Schools Project (TSP), which recently completed geocoding all the schools in the state.