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How do children’s neighborhood environments contribute to, or detract from, their academic achievement?

School-age children become socialized in community mores, play, make friends, and obtain support in their neighborhoods. Historically, neighborhoods functioned as a social center for children and families. Central to the study of neighborhoods is the notion that the individuals and families within a neighborhood setting create a context that influences child development. The resources, role models, and safety of a neighborhood combine to define that context. A critical developmental and social policy issue is to determine what processes contribute to better development among children growing up in low-income neighborhoods.

UW-Madison education professor Deborah Vandell and colleagues Lee Shumow and Jill Posner investigated whether certain neighborhood characteristics pose a risk for the academic performance of children at two points during elementary school—third grade and fifth grade. A second purpose of their study was to identify psychological and social resources that are associated with academic performance within high-risk neighborhoods. The study’s main question was whether living in high-risk neighborhoods is associated with problematic academic performance in third and fifth grades once individual familial factors are controlled.

The study extended prior work by incorporating several neighborhood characteristics (income, percentage of single-parent families, median adult education, and violent crime rate) into a composite measure, an approach consistent with cumulative risk analyses of families.

The children participating in the study lived in a variety of urban neighborhoods that included working- class and low-income families. This variation allowed Vandell and colleagues to tell whether school outcomes were systematically associated with neighborhood characteristics in these typical urban settings, controlling for family income, race, parent education, family structure, and child gender.

The researchers suspected that the influence of neighborhood characteristics on children’s school adjustment would appear by the fifth grade. One strength of this study is that it was conducted in a city (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), where a school choice plan was operating. Many children did not attend their neighborhood schools, meaning that researchers had little chance of confusing neighborhood characteristics and school characteristics.

Parents model expectations

Vandell and colleagues found that children’s academic performance in fifth grade was negatively associated with neighborhood risk even after controlling for demographic markers of familial risk. This relation was not evident in third grade. The finding that the residential neighborhood was a risk factor for these children during fifth but not third grade highlights the possible importance of this childhood period. Taken together with studies of children’s home range and neighborhood usage, it appears that this neighborhood influence corresponds to children’s increasing exposure to the social fabric of the neighborhood.

Social cognitive theory predicts that children learn by observing models of what they can expect to achieve and how to behave in ways to attain these expectations. Future research will need to address whether, during elementary school, children become more aware of what neighborhood adults have attained, and whether their expectations do mediate the relationships between neighborhood characteristics and school adjustment.

The study also considered factors that may offset neighborhood risk. Both individual and familial factors were found to relate to better academic performance among the children studied. For example, children with better impulse control and better academic self-competence demonstrated better academic performance in fifth grade.

Parents’ involvement in schooling (as reported by teachers) was a factor that appeared to help offset the negative impact of neighborhood risk on academic performance and school adjustment. This mirrors findings with adolescents. Parents who visit the school, provide children with enrichment experiences, and supervise homework make important contributions to children’s academic performance. There are probably several mechanisms operating here. For one, children have more opportunity to lean when they spend time doing educational activities outside of school. For another, parents are modeling interest and the value of school work when they visit the school and spend time outside of school extending children’s learning, which is likely to motivate children toward academic goals.

For more information contact Deborah Vandell at (608) 263-1902 or dvandell@facstaff.wisc.edu.

This article originally appeared in different form in the journal Merrill-Palmer Quarterly,
Vol.  45  Issue 2 (April 1999).