School deserts: Visualizing the death of the neighborhood school

The purported purpose of school choice policies is to increase students’ access to “good schools.” There is little discussion, however, of where those good schools are located, nor of the ways in which the distribution of good schools mirrors broader patterns of uneven development in the United States. Given that schools are neighborhood assets and that the distance which students travel to get to school affects their success, the locations of schools matter tremendously and are inextricable from questions of social and spatial justice. We introduce and argue for the explicit use of the term “school desert” as a way for scholars to understand and describe the spatial injustice of school closures and for activists to argue the importance of effective local schools. Spatial visualization and rendering of social problems is an invaluable strategy for effecting policy change. As cities move increasingly to a “de-spatialized” geography of schooling where catchment zones are less determinate of where a student attends school, it is important to consider where the desirable schools are and where they are not. A more nuanced visualization of school locations than neighborhood demographics offers a new lens through which to examine the (un)intended effects of school closures on students, communities, and development. Using Pennsylvania as a case study, we use a geographic information system (GIS) to evaluate the broader reverberations of school choice policies and determine who, demographically, has access to high-quality schools. In light of this research, we also propose an innovative analytic and methodology that describes the educational inequity which is caused by spatial relationships between students’ homes and high-quality schooling. Through the concept of a school desert we explore the (un)intended spatial implications of school closures. School deserts occur as a result of school choice policies that justify school closures. Closures and the location of good schools are geographically uneven, tempered by the federal and local policies that ensure income and racial segregation in US housing. Our analysis of Pennsylvania reveals the uneven distribution of access to good schools in the same way that mapping food deserts displays how market forces have failed to evenly distribute quality food. We find that areas with high-quality schools are significantly wealthier and whiter than school deserts, a conclusion which mirrors those concerning other low-quality neighborhood assets. School deserts as a methodology demonstrate that if students do not have geographic access to good schools, then school choice policies do not, in fact, offer choice.