Choosing Schools in Choice Neighborhoods: Impacts of Student Mobility, School Composition, and Case Management on Academic Outcomes

Education policy has often relied on school choice strategies—such as vouchers and charter schools—to help students access alternatives to high-poverty, racially isolated schools, which are widely associated with lower levels of academic engagement and achievement. These approaches primarily emphasize individual mobility as a means of reducing concentrated disadvantage. In contrast, some recent policy efforts have shifted toward place-based interventions that aim to improve conditions within disadvantaged neighborhoods themselves. hese initiatives aim to redevelop communities with concentrated poverty and racial isolation into mixed-income, racially diverse environments. The federal Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI), a large-scale public housing revitalization program, is one of the most comprehensive efforts to date.
Yung Chun, Jason Jabbari, Andrew Foell, DeMarcus Jenkins, and Odis Johnson Jr. assess the academic impacts of CNI by examining how student mobility, school compositional change, and case management services interact to influence achievement using an eight-year student-level panel from 2015 to 2023.

Their findings indicate that student transfers alone do not predict achievement changes; however, students who moved into CNI schools without meaningful improvements in school composition experienced declines in math performance, suggesting disruption or limited upward mobility. By contrast, transitions into schools with lower economic disadvantage or higher racial segregation were linked to academic improvements, particularly in reading. Case management services were most effective when coordinated with school moves, boosting ELA outcomes for movers and math performance for students who remained in place. Overall, the academic effects of neighborhood redevelopment depend on the tailored effective supports like case management services during key transition points.
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