Omesh Kaushal

Omesh Kaushal
Professor Probst
ENGLISH 1102
October 19th 2015
Impact of Neighborhood Status on Education
In todays world, it is not important to know 101 ways to succeed, but more important to
know 101 ways to not fail in life. One of such ways and an important factor to not fail is
education. Securing a high-quality education leads to having better employment opportunities,
which in turn, provides high earnings that are enough to support a high standard of living. Like
any other activity in the world, education needs some investments in the form of time,
knowledge, and money. The focus of this article is towards the money factor and further into the
type of neighborhoods that children grow-up into, creating an impact on their academic
performance. The specific study of the neighborhoods exhibit the different ways in which a small
(and sometimes even inconsiderate) aspect like neighborhood status, can create a large effect on
the educational lives of children.
In order to understand about the effects of neighborhood, it is very important to have
some basic knowledge about the Moving To Opportunity (MTO) experiment. This experiment
involved the moving of certain economically backward families from high-poverty
neighborhoods to low-poverty neighborhoods through a random selection process in five cities
namely Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. A study conducted by
Chetty Raj, Katz Lawrence, and Hendren Nathaniel showed that the children who moved out of
high-poverty neighborhoods exhibited improvements in their grades. (Heitin Liana, May 2015).
Another conclusion drawn from this study is that the children living in the low-poverty
neighborhood were often blessed with second chances while those living in the high-poverty
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neighborhoods were monitored with strict rules and regulations. As a result, the children living in
the high-poverty neighborhood not only scored lower grades in school, but also eventually failed
to enroll in colleges.
Many people might argue that neighborhood may or may not affect a childs education as
does other factors like gender and race among a few others. Research analysts like Aliprantis
Dionissi and Kolliner Daniel at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, in their article
Neighborhood Poverty and Quality in Moving to Opportunity Experiment, claim that,
.black low-poverty neighborhoods do not fare as well in these characteristics as do white
high-poverty neighborhoods where the term these characteristics refer to education,
employment and access to public resources. (Aliprantis and Kolliner, 2015). This statement
clearly differentiates people on the basis of their skin color (a wrong way to differentiate between
people) thus neglecting the financial-neighborhood element. They also term the MTO
experiment to be elusive. On the other hand, there is Leventhal Tama, Associate Professor in
Child Development and her fellow scholar Dupere Veronique stating that, MTO is the most
recent and well-known experimental study with a true experimental design for studying the
impacts of neighborhood on education thus validating the Moving To Opportunity experiment.
(Dupere, Veronique and Leventhal Tama, 2011). They also prove that the children that moved to
low-poverty neighborhood excelled significantly in their academic achievements, irrespective of
their race with the reference of many scholars to support their statements. Hence, we can
conclude that neighborhood is as important a factor as race and gender when investigating about
the impacts of various factors on learning.
The notion of community is not only restricted to neighborhoods but also spreads its
effect in schools and colleges. Children belonging to the same neighborhood often tend to form
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social circles with other students of the same economic status. There are highly any cases where
a kid from medium-class neighborhood bonded with another kid from the high-poverty
neighborhood. The children living in low-poverty neighborhoods many a times encourage their
peers to study hard and succeed in life whereas those growing up in high-poverty neighborhoods
do not take any special efforts to help their peers/friends move out of poverty. Elise Capella,
Associate Professor of Psychology at NYU, along with Catalina Torrente and Watling Neal
Jennifer in their analysis Childrens Positive School Behaviors and Social Preference in Urban
Elementary Classrooms found . a positive relation between academic performance and
social groups formed in the schools explaining the influences of social circles on academic
achievements of adolescents. (Capella et.al, 2014). In this way, the kind of group that a child
interacts with, distresses his/her education.
The effect of poverty on education is not only visible on kids growing up without any
disability but also on the ones that are disabled (both mentally and physically). As a matter of
fact, the kids that are differently-abled face more challenges towards attaining good education.
According to the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS-2), largest study regarding the
educational improvements of disabled kids, about 85% of the specially challenged kids in the
United States grew up in the high poverty neighborhood. This meant that the parents of these
children did not have sufficient funds to support their education. In addition to the schooling, the
NLTS-2 also observed that a very rare percentile of those kids attended college (Doren, Gau,
Muray, Seeley, Zyoch, 2015). Even though the government has come up with several programs
to educate the disabled kids, a few parents still think that educating such children would result in
a waste of time and money. Therefore, it is an urge to the parents of these special kids living in
the high-poverty neighborhood to try their best in educating their children.
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The lack of money not only has social effects but also leads to mental stress in children.
The parents of the families living in high-poverty neighborhood often work untimely shifts to
provide bread for the family. As a result, they do not have enough time to impart good values and
their family traditions into their children. These kids then feel left out from the world and are
more vulnerable to getting influenced by the neighbors in their vicinity. (Duncan, Magnuson,
Votruba-Drzal, 2015). If the neighborhood is good, then it creates a positive impact on children,
whereas if the neighborhood shoddy, it causes them to engage in criminal activities in order to be
felt important. On the other hand, the parents that do support their kids, often have higher
expectations from their children to help them move out of poverty. This makes the adolescents
feel burdened with responsibilities, leading to mental illness like anxiety disorder, schizophrenia
and many others at a very early stage in life. In this way, the shortage of money creates mental
stress on children, thus affecting their entire life.
Sometimes even the brightest minds experience obstacles in the form of lack in resources.
The parents of the children living in high-poverty neighborhood do not earn adequate amount of
money to enroll the students into schools and colleges as well as to provide them the essential
resources (textbooks, laptops, etc.). As a result, the students grade may suffer due to lack of such
resources, and he/she might have to drop out of college. (Noguera Pedro, 2011). To avoid such
situations, a reform plan named, Bolder Broader Approach (BBA) is set-up by the government.
The BBA collects funds from a few multi-national companies to provide for the resources of the
children. The adolescents that received these resources from BBA, used them efficiently and
made the most out of it to improve their grades.
As a result, from the above mentioned paragraphs we arrive at the conclusion that
neighborhood is no longer a negligible factor in the study of poverty and education. If the parents
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invest appropriate amount of time and money into a childs education, one day the same
education will help their children prosper in life. In addition to the parental guidance, the social
circles and group norms in a group, also influence an adolescents mind in the beginning stages
of life. The children that moved into the low-poverty neighborhood evinced improvements in
their grades on numerous occasions. Hence, it can be said that neighborhood does create a
significant impact on the childrens schooling and college age which then affects his
employment, further affecting his standard of living and thus his entire life span.

Omesh Kaushal

References:
1. Aliprantis, Dionissi and Kolliner, Daniel. Neighborhood Poverty and Quality in Moving to
Opportunity Experiment. Economic Commentary 2015.4 (2015): 1-6. Academic OneFile
(Gale Group). Web.
2. Capella, Elise; Torrente, Catalina E; Watling Neal, Jennifer. Childrens Positive School
Behaviors and Social Preference in Urban Elementary Classrooms. Journal of Community
Psychology 42.2 (2014): 143-161. EBSCOhost. Web.
3. Doren, Bonnie; Gau, Jeff M; Murray, Christopher; Seeley, John R; Zyoch, Keith.
Constructing and Validating a Multiple-Indicator Construct of Economic Hardship in a
National Sample of Adolescents with Disabilities. Exceptional Children 81.4 (2015) 507522. EBSCOhost. Web.
4. Duncan, Greg J; Magnuson, Catherine; Votruba-Drzal, Elizabeth. Boosting Family Income
to Promote Child Development. Future of Children24.1 (2015): 99-120. EBSCOhost. Web.
5. Dupere, Veronique and Leventhal Tama. Moving to Opportunity: Does long-term exposure
to low-poverty neighborhoods make a difference for adolescents? Social Science and
Medicine 73.5 (2011): 737-743. EBSCOhost. Web.
6. Heitin, Liana. Long Term Gain for Kids who Move Out of Poverty. Education Week 34.31
(2015): 7-7. EBSCOhost. Web.
7. Noguera, Pedro A. A Broader and Bolder Approach Uses Education to Break the Cycle of

Poverty. Phi Delta Kappan, 93.3 (2011): 8-14. JSTOR. Web.