ERIC ED536677: Is Demography Still Destiny? Neighborhood Demographics and Public High School Students' Readiness for College in New York City. A Research and Policy Brief

2012·6.5 MB·English

by  ERIC

BRONX
Is Demography
MANHATTAN
Still Destiny?
QUEENS
Neighborhood Demographics and
Public High School Students’ Readiness
BROOKLYN
for College in New York City
BRONX
A RESEARCH AND POLICY BRIEF MANHATTAN
QUEENS
BROOKLYN
?
Y
N
I
T
S ABOUT THE ANNENBERG INSTITUTE FOR SCHOOL REFORM
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L The Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR) is a national policy-research and reform-support organiza-
L
I
T tion, affiliated with Brown University, that focuses on improving conditions and outcomes for all students in
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Y urban public schools, especially those attended by traditionally underserved children. AISR’s vision is the
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P transformation of traditional school systems into “smart education systems” that develop and integrate high-
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R quality learning opportunities in all areas of students’ lives – at school, at home, and in the community.
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M AISR conducts research; works with a variety of partners committed to educational improvement to build
E capacity in school districts and communities; and shares its work through print and Web publications. Rather
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S than providing a specific reform design or model to be implemented, AISR’s approach is to offer an array of
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tools and strategies to help districts and communities strengthen their local capacity to provide and sustain
high-quality education for all students.
Written by
Norm Fruchter
Megan Hester
Christina Mokhtar
Zach Shahn
b
Editing
Margaret Balch-Gonzalez
Graphic Design
Haewon Kim
The authors would like to acknowledge Leonard Rodberg for access to the Infoshare Community Information
System – a computerized database that allows community groups, nonprofit organizations, and others to
access demographic, health, and economic information about New York City at different geographic levels –
and for assistance in identifying the overlap between New York City zip codes and neighborhoods.
Suggested Citation: Fruchter, N. M, M. Hester, C. Mokhtar, and Z. Shahn. 2012. Is Demography Still Destiny?
Neighborhood Demographics and Public High School Students’ Readiness for College in New York City.
Providence, RI: Annenberg Institute for School Reform, Brown University.
This publication is available online at: http://annenberginstitute.org/product/IsDemographyStillDestiny
© 2012 Brown University, Annenberg Institute for School Reform
(cid:1) Box 1985
Providence, Rhode Island 02912
(cid:1) 233 Broadway, Suite 720
New York, New York 10279
www.annenberginstitute.org
Twitter: @AnnenbergInst
Facebook: www.facebook.com/AnnenbergInstituteForSchoolReform
Is Demography Still Destiny?
Neighborhood Demographics and
Public High School Students’ Readiness
for College in New York City
Summary college, while nearly 80 percent of Other policies that would begin to
students from Tribeca do. address these gaps are:
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uring the past decade, the • In the city’s neighborhoods with • Create a more equitable distribu-
Bloomberg administration has 100 percent Black and Latino res- tion of in-school guidance and
explicitly prioritized narrowing the idents, no more than 10 percent counseling resources to help fami-
racial achievement gap. Former of high school students graduate lies successfully navigate the
Chancellor Joel Klein has often ready for college. school choice maze.
argued, “neither resources nor • In the Manhattan neighborhoods • Significantly increase the number
demography is destiny in the class- with the highest college-readiness of educational-option seats to
room,” and the New York City rates, fewer than 10 percent of the ensure that students of all aca-
residents are Black or Latino. demic levels and all neighbor-
Department of Education has
• Eighteen of the twenty-one hoods have a fair shot at seats in
invested heavily in school choice to
neighborhoods with the lowest the high schools that are most
achieve this goal, remaking the high
college-readiness rates are in the likely to prepare them for college.
school choice system to increase the
Bronx (the other two are in • Invest heavily in school improve-
scope and equity of student assign-
Brooklyn). ment strategies, rather than just
ment to high school. Yet a new
• Thirteen of the fifteen neighbor- school creation and choice, to
study by the Annenberg Institute for
hoods with the highest college- increase the capacity of existing
School Reform at Brown University
readiness rates are in Manhattan schools to prepare students for
indicates that the college readiness (the other two are in Queens). college.
of New York City high school gradu-
In spite of the city’s efforts to Without such comprehensive efforts,
ates is still very highly correlated
increase equity by expanding high the vast disparity in opportunity that
with the neighborhood they come
school choice and creating five hun- separates the city’s neighborhoods
from. In particular, the racial compo-
dred new small schools and one will persist.
sition and average income of a stu-
hundred charter schools, college
dent’s home neighborhood are very
readiness rates are still largely pre-
strong predictors of a student’s
dicted by the demographics of a stu-
chance of graduating high school
dent’s home neighborhood. This
ready for college. The gaps between
suggests that the strategies of school
neighborhoods are enormous:
choice and school creation are not
• Only 8 percent of students from
sufficient to create the equity that
Mott Haven graduate ready for
the administration has envisioned.
Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University 1
Introduction the nation’s most comprehensive sys- each of the three groups, while the
Y? tem of high school choice on equity other half were randomly assigned
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I ver the past decade, Mayor of opportunity for the system’s high by computer. Edward R. Murrow,
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S Michael Bloomberg has reor- school students. Our findings sug- Murray Bergtraum, and Norman
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D ganized the New York City school gest that while high school choice Thomas High Schools were subse-

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L system using principles and strategies may have improved educational quently opened as educational option
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S extrapolated from his corporate sec- options for individual students, schools in the 1970s and employed

HY tor experience. The mayor and his choice has not been sufficient to the same selection criteria.
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A administration have restructured the increase systemic equity of opportu-
R These large ed-op schools expanded
G public school system into a portfolio nity. Our results indicate that univer-
O the equity dimensions of choice by
M district centered on choice, auton- sal high school choice has not
attracting a diverse mix of students
DE omy, and accountability. These disrupted the relationship of demog-
ranging from academically strug-
S strategies have been promoted as the raphy to educational destiny across
I gling to high achieving. In the fol-
most effective and efficient way to the city’s struggling neighborhoods.
lowing decades, more ed-op high
reduce the school system’s substantial
schools were created and other high
racial achievement gap and improve Evolution of High School
schools added discrete ed-op pro-
the quality of education for all the Choice
grams, significantly expanding the
city’s students. As a consequence,
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New York City’s restructuring effort he New York City school sys-
has been replicated in districts across tem has developed the nation’s Choice has not been sufficient
the country, and the New York City most comprehensive system of high
2 to increase systemic equity of
school system is often defined as the school choice. In the century since
nation’s foremost exemplar of a port- Stuyvesant High School was opened opportunity.
folio district. as a citywide choice school, students’
selection of high schools (and high
After a decade of implementation, range and equity of high school
schools’ selection of students) has
a variety of student, school, and choice offerings. These ed-op
become an almost universal process.1
system-level outcomes offer a win- schools and programs represent an
dow into the successes and shortcom- High school choice in New York early form of controlled school
ings of New York City’s portfolio City has expanded and grown more choice by offering placements within
district reforms. This research brief complex as efforts to extend the designated schools to a mix of stu-
examines one aspect of the impact of scope and quality of student choice dents with varying academic abilities.
have alternated with efforts to create
In the mid-1980s, the creation of
an equitable mix of students within
Central Park East Secondary School
1Stuyvesant High School began restricting schools. In the late 1960s, John
as a high school of choice helped
admission based on academics in 1919. In Dewey High School opened as the
1972, the New York State legislature linked it initiate a wave of small high school
first educational option (or “ed-op”)
with the Bronx High School of Science and development, pioneered by New
high school. Dewey offered place-
Brooklyn Technical High School and man- Visions for Public Schools and the
ments to students categorized into
dated admission to those three schools to
Center for Collaborative Education
students with the highest scores on a special three admissions groups – high, low,
and supported by the Aaron Dia-
citywide test. Five additional high schools and average achievers – according to
mond Foundation. Through these
were subsequently added to this elite cate- their citywide reading test scores.
gory of specialized schools by the New York initiatives, in the early 1990s some
Dewey selected half the students in
City Department of Education during the thirty-five new small high schools of
Bloomberg administration. choice were developed. An equiva-
lent number of new small high
schools were developed as part of testing experts Howard Everson and
“Neither resources nor demogra-
the New York Networks for School Daniel Koretz (2010) showing that
Renewal, the Annenberg Founda- phy is destiny in the classroom” students who reach these bench-
tion’s New York City Challenge marks are significantly more likely
––Joel Klein
grantee, in the mid-1990s. These to earn at least a C in a college-level
efforts considerably expanded the course in that subject.
universe of high school choice. improve the high school selection (cid:1)Methods
process was to ensure that demogra-
Starting in 2002, the Bloomberg
phy was not destiny for the city’s In 2011, the New York City Depart-
administration, supported by grants
high school students. As the econo- ment of Education (NYCDOE)
from the Bill & Melinda Gates
mists who developed the high school released data on college readiness
Foundation, Carnegie Corporation,
choice matching process observed in indicators for each New York City
and the Open Society Institute,
a journal article about the new high school, as an additional measure
greatly intensified the pace of small
process, of school performance on the NYC-
high school creation. The adminis-
DOE’s Annual Progress Reports. But
tration also recalibrated the high One impetus for increasing
school choice process. Under school choice was to make sure
former Schools Chancellor Joel students who lived in disadvan-
Klein, the process was refined to taged neighborhoods were not 2New York State’s definition of college readi-
ness, based strictly on Regents scores, is
increase the number of individual automatically assigned to disad-
called the Aspirational Performance Meas-
schools each student could select, vantaged schools. (Abdulka-
ure. For the purposes of this analysis, we
and the selection process was diroglu, Pathak & Roth 2005, p.
have used the NYCDOE’s more expansive
improved by using a computer- 364) College Readiness Index, which is defined as
driven algorithm similar to the the percentage of students who graduate
formula that matches teaching hospi- High School Choice and with a Regents diploma, earn a 75 or higher
tals and medical student interns to Demography/Destiny on the English Regents or score 480 or higher
on the Critical Reading SAT, and earn an 80
pair students’ choices with schools’
B or higher on one Math Regents and complete
selections. ut has the high school choice
coursework in Algebra II/Trigonometry or a
system succeeded in breaking
higher-level math subject, or score 480 or
As a result, the percentage of stu-
the link between demography and higher on the Math SAT. A student can
dents placed in one of their top
destiny? The analysis in this brief demonstrate completion of math coursework
choices of high school has increased
begins to address that question. by: (a) Passing a course in Algebra II/
every year since 2009. In 2011, for Trigonometry or higher and taking one of
example, 83 percent of high school In 2010 the New York State Educa- the following exams: the Math B Regents,
applicants were matched with one tion Department developed a set of Algebra II/ Trigonometry Regents, AP Calcu-
of their five top choices. Mayor indicators to assess student capacity lus, AP Statistics, or IB Math; or (b) Passing
the Math B or Algebra II/Trigonometry
Bloomberg and former Chancellor to succeed in college, based on stu-
Regents. We used this metric because it was
Klein frequently linked their school dent performance on Regents exams
the latest data available at the time of our
reform efforts to the goals of the civil and CUNY assessment tests. If stu- analysis.
rights movement; for example, in dents pass the Math Regents exam
2009 Klein proclaimed that “neither with a score of at least 80 and the
resources nor demography is destiny English Regents exam with a score of
in the classroom.” One of the goals at least 75, they are now defined by
of the administration’s efforts to New York State as college ready.2
This metric is based on research by
Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University 3
because the choice system often sev- scores of all the city’s public high
No single neighborhood factor
Y? ers the connection between students’ school students, broken down by the
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I home neighborhoods and the high students’ residential zip code. AISR was as strongly associated
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S schools they attend (since students amalgamated the student data for
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D with college readiness as racial/
choose schools throughout the city), individual zip codes into a citywide

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IL the data did not connect the demo- neighborhood index3and then car- ethnic composition.
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S graphics of students’ neighborhood ried out a series of analyses to assess

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H residence with their college readiness the relationship between students’
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A scores to assess the extent to which residential neighborhood demo- (cid:1)Findings
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G neighborhood demographics are graphic factors4and students’ college
O AISR’s analysis found that several
M associated with students’ college readiness scores, aggregated up to
E neighborhood socio-economic fac-
D readiness rates. the neighborhood level.
tors, such as single motherhood,
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I In 2011, researchers at the Annen- AISR used an online data tool, devel-
extent of mother’s education, unem-
berg Institute for School Reform oped by the Infoshare Community
ployment rate, and citizenship status,
(AISR) at Brown University Information Service, to merge U.S.
were significantly correlated with
requested and received data from Census data, primarily neighborhood
students’ college readiness rates.
the NYCDOE on the high school indicators by New York City zip
For example, the higher the average
graduation and college readiness code, with the college readiness
mother’s level of education in any
scores by students’ residential zip
New York City neighborhood, the
code provided by the NYCDOE. To
higher the college readiness scores
4 3We use Infoshare’s definition of a New aggregate from the zip code to the of the students residing in that
York City neighborhood: “one of 292 neighborhood level, we used data neighborhood. Conversely, the
neighborhoods in which New Yorkers gener- provided by Infoshare that specifies
higher a neighborhood’s percentage
ally think of themselves as residing” the overlap of neighborhoods and
of single mothers, the lower the col-
(www.infoshare.org).
zip codes. Whenever neighborhood
lege readiness scores of students liv-
boundaries did not coincide with
ing in that neighborhood. The mean
4These residential neighborhood demo-
those of zip codes, we used 2009
income level in each neighborhood
graphic factors were culled from the U.S.
Census tract populations, broken
Census 2005–2009 American Community Sur- was particularly strongly correlated
down by the Census tracts in each
vey averages for New York City. The five-year with students’ college readiness
averages are the most reliable, have the zip code and neighborhood, to calcu- scores – the lower a neighborhood’s
largest sample size, and are best used when late the proportion of the neighbor-
mean income, the lower the college
examining Census tracts and small areas hood’s population that comes from
readiness scores of the students living
such as neighborhoods.
each zip code. We assigned each
in that neighborhood.
neighborhood a college readiness
No single neighborhood factor was
score that represents the weighted
as strongly associated with college
average of the college readiness
readiness as racial/ethnic composi-
scores of those zip codes that overlap
tion. The strongest negative rela-
with the neighborhood. We used
tionship to students’ college
the same procedures for any demo-
readiness scores was the percentage
graphic variable we converted to the
of Black and Latino residents in the
neighborhood level.
city’s neighborhoods – the higher the
percentage of Black and Latino resi-
dents in specific neighborhoods, the
lower the college readiness scores of
the high school graduates (in 2011)
in those neighborhoods. Figure 1,
with all the city’s neighborhoods
represented by circles, illustrates
this very strong negative log-linear
relationship.
The relationship between the two
variables – students’ college readi-
ness scores and the racial composi- FIGURE 1
Proportion of Black and Latino neighborhood residents vs. college readiness
tion of neighborhoods across New
York City – is remarkably tight.
When we examined the relationship 80
of other demographic factors (e.g.,
income, single motherhood, citizen-
ship status) to college readiness rates,
60
we could identify several outliers –
y
d
neighborhoods that broke the pat- ea
e r
tern. But the very strong relationship g
e
between race and college readiness coll
nt 40
yielded only one neighborhood e
c
er
(Woodlawn –see Figure 2 on next P
page) as a possible outlier, and this is
explained by unusual population pat- 20
terns in the neighborhood.
Figure 2 shows that no more than 10
percent of the high school students -3.0 -2.5 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0
in the Bronx neighborhoods of Mor- log(Proportion Black or Latino)
risania, Woodstock, Longwood,
Claremont, and Mott Haven gradu-
ated high school college ready in
2011. These neighborhoods with low
college readiness rates have the high-
est percentages of Black and Latino
residents in New York City. In fact,
eighteen of the twenty-one neigh-
borhoods with the lowest college
readiness rates are in the Bronx, the
borough with the highest percentage
of Black and Latino residents.
Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University 5
Conversely, as Figure 3 shows, 74
Y? percent or more of the high school
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I students in more advantaged Man-
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S hattan neighborhoods such as
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D
Tribeca, Little Italy, Soho, and

L FIGURE 2
L Lenox Hill graduated college ready
TI New York City high schools with lowest college readiness rates
S in 2011. All four of these Manhattan
Note high percentages of Black and Latino neighborhood residents
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H neighborhoods with very high col-
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A College Black/Latino* lege-ready rates have 10 percent or
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G Neighborhood Borough Readiness (%) (%) less Black and Latino residents. An
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M East New York Brooklyn 12 96 analysis of graduate rates showed a
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D Ocean Hill Brooklyn 12 99 similar negative log-linear associa-

S tion with the proportion of Blacks
I North Baychester Bronx 12 93
and Latinos in the neighborhood
Edenwald Bronx 12 93
populations. But there was more
Melrose Bronx 12 100 variation in graduation rates than
Hunt's Point Bronx 12 100 college readiness rates among neigh-
borhoods with the most Black and
East Tremont Bronx 12 98
Latino residents, indicating that
Mount Hope Bronx 11 98
there is more equity in opportunity
Bathgate Bronx 11 95
for high school outcomes than for
6
Brownsville Brooklyn 11 100 college readiness.
Crotona Park Bronx 11 99
Given that only 13 percent of the
Port Morris Bronx 11 96 city’s Black and Latino students
East Concourse Bronx 11 100 currently graduate high school pre-
pared for college, compared with
Wakefield Bronx 11 83
50 percent of White students and
Mount Eden Bronx 11 99
50 percent of Asian students,5these
Morrisania Bronx 10 100
findings are not surprising. Yet it is
Woodstock Bronx 10 100 quite sobering that despite efforts to
Longwood Bronx 10 100 improve the high school choice sys-
tem to increase educational opportu-
Claremont Bronx 10 100
nities for the city’s students, the
Mott Haven Bronx 8 100
relationship between demography
Woodlawn Bronx 8 52**
and college readiness is so strong
across the city’s neighborhoods.
*Black/Latino refers to the proportion Black plus the proportion Latino, which can
sometimes be more than 100 percent because some people identify as both. Where Because the college-ready indicator
percentages added up to more than 100, we rounded to 100. is so new, it has not been possible to
**Woodlawn, which has a large White population, shares a zip code with Eastchester, construct comparisons to determine
a neighborhood that is predominately Black. There are disproportionately more
whether the relationship between
Black high school students in this zip code, so its low college readiness rate reflects
the characteristics of Eastchester. neighborhood demographics and
college readiness has changed across
time. Thus our analysis is very time-
limited – a snapshot based on one
year of data. However, because the
relationship between race and out-
comes demonstrated in Figure 1
could hardly be more tight, it is not
likely to have lessened significantly
in recent years.
FIGURE 3
In a broadside that former Chancel- New York City high schools with highest college readiness rates
lor Klein and Michelle Rhee pub- Note low percentages of Black and Latino neighborhood residents
lished in 2010, they declared, “The
College Black/Latino
single most important factor deter-
Neighborhood Borough Readiness (%) (%)
mining whether students succeed in
Tribeca Manhattan 79 9
school is not the color of their skin
Little Italy Manhattan 77 10
or their ZIP code or even their par-
ents’ income – it is the quality of Soho Manhattan 74 9
their teacher.” Yet our findings indi- Lenox Hill Manhattan 74 6
cate that ZIP code, income, and,
Douglaston & Little Neck Queens 74 13
above all, the racial composition
City Hall Manhattan 71 12
of students’ neighborhoods is very
strongly correlated with student Upper East Side Manhattan 70 8
success. Chinatown Manhattan 68 16
In spite of the NYCDOE’s efforts to Yorkville Manhattan 66 9
enhance both the extent of selectivity World Trade Center Manhattan 66 9
and the equity of high school choice, Battery Park Manhattan 66 9
demography is still – and quite
Oakland Gardens Queens 65 15
relentlessly – destiny in terms of the
Bellevue Area Manhattan 65 13
relationship between neighborhood
race/ethnicity and college readiness Turtle Bay Manhattan 65 8
across the city’s public school system. West Village Manhattan 65 11
Universal high school choice seems
not to have provided equity of out-
comes for the city’s high school
students.
5According to the NYCDOE School-Level
Regents-Based Math/ELA Aspirational Per-
formance Measure (2010), which is the only
college readiness metric provided that is bro-
ken down by race. See http://schools.nyc.
gov/NR/rdonlyres/193BBD8A-5DE1-4EEE-
B49B-C8C45357441B/0/Graduation_Rates
_Public_School_Apm.xls.
Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University 7
Exploring the Causes Corcoran and Levin discovered that found that even given the students’
Y? of the Choice/ the average number of high school tendency to choose schools that
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I Demography Link choices students made varied signifi- matched their own backgrounds:
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ES cantly by the middle school they Students’ first-choice schools are
D W
hat might help to explain attended. After controlling “for stu- on average more advantaged and
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IL these disturbing results? dent characteristics (e.g., achieve- less racially isolated than stu-
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S Sean Corcoran and Henry Levin’s ment, race, poverty) and residential dents’ middle schools . . . [but]

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H (2011) comprehensive analysis of the area,” the authors observed “sizable students’ final school assignment
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A city’s high school choice system pro- middle school effects on choices” is more similar to the students’
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G vides some suggestions. Corcoran (p. 212). Efforts by the New York feeder school. (p. 218)
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M and Levin found that under the City Coalition for Educational Jus-
E Thus, student preferences for
D Bloomberg administration, educa- tice (2007, 2008) have demonstrated
schools that match their back-
S tional option program offerings, that patterns of inequity in middle
I
grounds, combined with the opera-
which control school choice to school curricula, as well as disparities
tion of the matching process
increase equity of student opportu- in resources such as teacher quality
formula, tend to assign students to
nity, have significantly diminished. and student support, are associated
schools more similar to their middle
Unscreened programs, in which stu- with low student achievement in the
schools than the schools they
dents are randomly selected by com- city’s middle schools. Given Corco-
selected as their first choice.
puter, with priority given to those ran and Levin’s finding of “sizable
who attend a school open house or middle school effects,” research Corcoran and Levin acknowledge
information session, have signifi- efforts should assess whether pre- in their study that the Bloomberg
8
cantly increased. Researchers need to dictable disparities in guidance- administration has improved the
examine the equity implications of counselor-to-student ratios in middle choice system’s transparency and
these policy changes. schools are shaping these effects on equity. If there is a cost, they suggest,
high school choice.6 it lies in the system’s increased com-
plexity and the administration’s neu-
Corcoran and Levin (2011) also
“Students’ first-choice schools are trality: “The DOE has shifted the
found:
burden of a complex choice decision
on average more advantaged and
Students tended to prefer high
onto students, their parents, and
schools that matched their own
less racially isolated than students’ schools.” They conclude:
academic, racial, and socioeco-
Whether or not this shift
middle schools . . . [but] students’ nomic background. . . . These
improves academic outcomes . . .
patterns suggest that universal
final school assignment is more will depend on how students and
choice will be limited in its ability
their families make school
similar to the students’ feeder to prevent stratification of stu-
choices. If demand is relatively
dents across schools by race,
school.” insensitive to academic quality
socio-economic status, and aca-
and more responsive to location
––Sean Corcoran and Harry Levin, demic ability. (pp. 214–215)
and/or social influences, even a
“School Choice and Competition in
the New York City Schools” But Corcoran and Levin also fair system of choice will fail to
observed a pattern of disparity provide an impetus for academic
between students’ first choice of high improvement. Moreover, to the
school, students’ middle schools, and
the high schools students were ulti-
mately assigned to. Essentially, they