STUDENT LIFE

Many Americans believe that urban schools are failing to educate the students they serve. Even among people who think that schools are doing a good job overall are those who believe that in certain schools, conditions are abysmal. Their perception, fed by numerous reports and observations, is that urban students achieve less in school, attain less education, and encounter less success in the labor market later in life.

Researchers and educators often link this perceived performance of urban youth to home and school environments that do not foster educational and economic success. Moreover, urban educators report the growing challenges of educating urban youth who are increasingly presenting problems such as poverty, limited English proficiency, family instability, and poor health. Finally, testimony and reports on the condition of urban schools feed the perception that urban students flounder in decaying, violent environments with poor resources, teachers, and curricula, and with limited opportunities.

This report addresses these widespread beliefs about the performance of urban students, and their family and school environments. Using data from several national surveys, it compares urban students and schools with their suburban and rural counterparts on a broad range of factors, including student population and background characteristics, afterschool activities, school experiences, and student outcomes.

A specific focus of this report is how poverty relates to the characteristics of the students and schools studied. Since, on average, urban public schools are more likely to serve low income students, it is possible that any differences between urban and nonurban schools and students are due to this higher concentration of low income students. In this study, the methodology used to explore differences between urban, suburban, and rural students and schools incorporates a control for the concentration of poverty in the school. Thus, this study allows comparisons to be made between urban and other schools and students, after factoring out one major characteristic of urban schools that is often related to differences between schools--the higher concentration of low income students.

In addition, this report focuses on those urban schools that serve the highest concentrations of low income students, in light of national concern over these schools. Previous research has suggested that students from schools with high concentrations of low income students and students from urban schools would be expected to have less successful educational outcomes, less supportive home environments, and less positive school experiences than students from other schools. In fact, this study finds large differences between urban and non-urban schools and between high poverty and low poverty schools on most of the indicators of student background, school experiences, and student outcomes studied.

Students attending schools with both an urban location and a high poverty concentration were expected, therefore, to have particularly unfavorable circumstances. This report documents how urban high poverty schools and their students compare with their counterparts in other locations across many areas of concern, according to national surveys. Furthermore, the analysis specifically examines whether these schools and students compare less favorably than predicted, when considering together the effects of poverty concentration and an urban location. If the differences between urban high poverty schools and others are no greater than predicted, it indicates that the circumstances in these schools are related in predicted ways to the effects of poverty concentration and an urban location added together. However, if the differences are greater than predicted, it indicates that the effects of poverty concentration and location interact, and that the level for that particular measure exceeds the level that was predicted from these two effects alone. When this occurs, urban high poverty schools and their students are said to compare particularly unfavorably (or favorably, as the case may be) to other schools on that measure.