ABSTRACT
This chapter explores existing literature on the connections between gentrification and urban schooling and argues that the future of this research requires conceptual and methodological diversity. In its most general sense, gentrification describes a type of physical, economic, and cultural transition in low-income urban neighborhoods in which disinvested, oftentimes minority neighborhoods subsequently experience an influx of wealthier households and increases in real property values. The most extensive research to date about the degree to which urban schools have been exposed to this recent wave of gentrification shows that exposure rates can be quite common, but it depends on the city. Important questions remain about how gentrification relates to the structure and function of urban schools. A related issue about compositional change that may help explain the earlier noted differences about the relationship between gentrification and urban schooling is whether and the extent to which gentrification leads to residential displacement in a given school’s surrounding community.
