Adolescent Development and School Achievement in Urban Communities

Resilience in the Neighborhood

Gary Creasey, Patricia A Jarvis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415894166
• eBook ISBN: 9781136703089
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This timely volume explores essential themes, issues, and challenges related to adolescents' lives and learning in underserviced urban areas. Distinguished scholars provide theoretically grounded, multidisciplinary perspectives on contexts and forces that influence adolescent development and achievement. The emphasis is on what is positive and effective, what can make a real difference in the lives and life chances for urban youths, rather than deficits and negative dysfunction. Going beyond solely traditional psychological theories, a strong conceptual framework addressing four domains for understanding adolescent development undergirds the volume:

• developmental continuities from childhood
• primary changes (biological, cognitive, social)
• contexts of development
• adolescent outcomes.

A major federal government initiative is the development of programs to support underserviced urban areas. Directly relevant to this initiative, this volume contributes significantly to gaining a realistic understanding of the contexts and institutions within which urban youths live and learn.

1

URBAN AND UNDERSERVICED COMMUNITIES

Theoretical and Conceptual Considerations

Gary L. Creasey and Patricia A. Jarvis

Where do you live? As former residents of Virginia, one of the authors would argue he grew up in a “small town”; however, size is relative to some degree. Whereas his definition of “small town” was about 20,000 residents, we discovered when we moved to the Midwestern region of the United States that there are many “small towns” that possess fewer than 300 inhabitants. Further, we have also discovered that definitions such as “poor small town” or “urban areas” are also subject to personal opinions. One of our students indicated that he grew up in a “poor, underserviced city” in Illinois. During a recent visit, we discovered that many residents of this city make very good salaries, and the town itself has a low foreclosure rate, several thriving businesses and a regional medical center. Due to such strong differences of opinion, it is evident that we need better definitions concerning the neighborhoods we live in.

What is “Urban”?

What is meant by the term “Urban”? The United States Census Bureau (2010) provides useful definitions concerning the distinction between urban and rural areas of the country that are based on population and population density, or number of inhabitants per square mile. Urbanized areas are defined as densely populated regions marked by more than 50,000 inhabitants and are often part of relatively crowded, highly interconnected metropolitan regions that have strongly linked economic ties within the area. Large cities such as New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit are rather easy to locate; however, the metropolitan area extends past these cities. Within these regions, economies are somewhat tied by the residents, who may commute across the area to their jobs and spend money across the region. As an example, certain regions of the country—such as, New York, New Jersey, and sections of Pennsylvania and Connecticut—almost seem to share a common metropolitan area.

Whereas census and population data are useful in defining urban versus nonurban regions of the country, many adolescents who live in the “Washington DC Area” may not be markedly different from youth who live in smaller cities, such as Toledo, Ohio or Aiken, South Carolina. In contrast, although residents of Chicago, Joliet and Downers Grove, Illinois may all lay claim to living in the “Chicagoland” metropolitan area, they might not share much in common other than an affinity for the Chicago Cubs.

Even making vast comparisons between adolescents who live in heavily populated urban areas is difficult because the conditions within these areas can be dramatically different. Perhaps a better mechanism to ascertain the actual impact of living in different urban areas is to consider the broader demographics of the regions. For example, living in an underserviced urban area is dramatically different from growing up in affluent neighborhoods in urban communities. Indeed, population density, economic health, and access to good health care and schools are more likely to influence adolescent adjustment than just being from an urban, suburban or rural community, or growing up in the “North” versus the “South.” Thus, whereas it is important to make distinctions between urban, suburban and rural areas, embedded within these regions are often distinct neighborhoods that can range from great affluence to extreme hardship and poverty.

What is an Underserviced Neighborhood?

Scholars have begun to identify variables that are characteristic of certain neighborhoods, or areas with distinct demographic (e.g., wealthy versus poor; Italian versus Polish), geographical (e.g., “Southside,” “Garden District”), or politically defined (e.g., “Lower Ninth Ward”) identifiers that could affect adolescent development. To more precisely define neighborhood boundaries, researchers may rely on local census data, administrative data sources (e.g., the way city leaders or law enforcement classifies boundaries), or some combination of the two (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000). Local residents, who may indicate that there are distinct divisions within census- or administratively-defined neighborhoods, may augment these data and provide more useful refinements.

What markers of neighborhoods are frequently used to predict adolescent developmental adjustment? These variables can be classified using the following dimensions (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000):

1. Income or social economic status (SES), ranging from affluent/high SES to poverty/low SES.

2. Racial/ethnic diversity, often assessed by concentrations of African American, Latino and foreign-born residents.

3. Residential stability, marked by either geographic mobility (people moving in and out of the neighborhood), or numbers of residents who have lived in their houses for more than 10 years and proportion of owner-occupied (versus rented) residents.

By combining these data with other indicators, one can begin to determine if a neighborhood is underserviced. It is sometimes difficult to “picture” what we mean by the term “underserviced.” Consider media portrayals of urban neighborhoods that contain high-rise housing projects, litter strewn yards and packs of young men lurking on street corners. However, such images really do not inform us as to what is really going on in a community or neighborhood.

When we ask our college students to consider underserviced communities, the vast majority point to racial, ethnic and socioeconomic variables, such as family or community income levels. Indeed, race, ethnicity, English proficiency and socioeconomic status are all variables that are used to identify at risk or marginalized groups of people (Peterman, 2008). However, it is important to marry these personal characteristics to other indicators of school and community functioning to arrive at the term “underserviced.” That is, a defining feature of this term concerns barriers to health care, economic opportunity and educational choices. Thus, underserviced populations live in communities that have difficult access to good health care, jobs and schools. This could be due to population density, economic resources for the schools and community, and the time it takes to pursue health care options (Weitz, Freund, & Wright, 2001).

The educational barriers that face adolescents who live in underserviced communities can be realized by examining the obstacles that are encountered in the residing school systems. For example, an underserviced school is likely to contain large percentages of students on reduced or free lunches (a common demographic variable to assess family poverty) and significantly below grade level (Chou & Tozer, 2008). To illustrate, there are many schools in the City of Chicago in which 99% of the students receive free or reduced lunches and less than 10% are meeting or exceeding state academic standards (Illinois Interactive Report Card, 2012). Further, one major concern in this case is whether or not teachers, staff, and administrators are effectively trained to work with these students.

Indeed, these students are also robbed of effective instructors. For example, two more variables that mark underserviced schools are high teacher turnover and large percentages of teachers who are in emergency or temporary positions (Chou & Tozer, 2008). Thus, the students who are the most in need of high quality instruction often do not receive it.

So, personal characteristics such as race or ethnicity are only part of the picture when considering underserviced communities. The bigger picture concerns how these variables are interwoven with broader demographic and community variables—the reason that some picture underserviced populations as African American or Latino is because they are overrepresented in underserviced communities. However, poverty does not just affect adolescents of color. As an example, the Appalachian area, which marks vast regions of western Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and West Virginia, contains high rates of poverty, substandard health care, schools and housing—these regions are populated by high percentages of Caucasian residents.

As will be determined in this book, the interrelationships between these variables have been consistently linked to adolescent adjustment. Youth who live in relatively affluent neighborhoods marked by high resident stability display better psychosocial outcomes (e.g., achievement; positive mental health) than their counterparts who live in poverty-stricken neighborhoods marked by high resident instability and ethnic segregation (Leventhal, Dupéré, & Brooks-Gunn, 2009). Further, the adolescents who live in the more affluent neighborhoods engage in less risk-taking behavior (e.g., unprotected sexual activity) than youth who live in poorer neighborhoods, particularly when these latter residents are economically and racially/ethnically segregated (Baumer & South, 2001).

It is important to consider what we mean by the latter comment. Whereas most readers are familiar with neighborhoods and towns that contain a mix of residents from different demographic brackets, it appears that risk to adolescents increases when poverty is more concentrated and marked by racial/ethnic/social segregation. Based on such concerns, what social forces are at work to produce such economic disparities?

Underlying Mechanisms of Neighborhood Affluence

There are numerous reasons that there are high concentrations of poverty in the United States and worldwide. One risk factor concerns a sudden increase in a community population, often predicated by a promise of economic opportunity (e.g., low-cost housing) or jobs. Although such opportunities may bode well for a community for some time, difficulties arise if major employers go out of business or leave the community entirely (Wilson, 1987). Such deindustrialization then leaves a void in the community, as there may be sudden unemployment and a heavy concentration of low-paying jobs with few benefits. As an example, consider the plight of cities such as Detroit, Michigan—and what has transpired in and around this city—due to the collapse of the automobile industry.

Beyond sudden population increases and deindustrialization, another difficulty arises if more affluent, educated adults and families leave the community. This is often due to decreased occupational, economic and educational opportunities. This process then leaves behind a relatively poor, uneducated group of individuals that may find it difficult to find employment because they might not be qualified to assume good job opportunities, or, such jobs may have left the community entirely. This was a process that affected a number of major cities in the last century (Wilson, 1987).

As one example, as affluent, well-educated, urban dwelling African American families left the southern United States and settled in Midwestern urban areas, their White counterparts subsequently moved out of these same areas to settle into outer suburbs. Whereas these newly arrived African American families (and their adolescents) thrived, they too quickly left these urban areas as a new wave of poor, relatively uneducated African Americans from the rural south arrived during a second migration period. Although these new migrants were also African American, they were culturally very different from their predecessors (who were better educated and from southern United States cities) who quickly vacated when these new residents moved to the Midwestern urban areas. When these relatively affluent, educated African American families left, the jobs went with them (Black, 2003). This transition then left high concentrations of poor, uneducated African American families with few job or economic prospects.

Partly to combat this difficulty across the country, federal and local policies were instituted to protect these relatively isolated, poor, heavily segregated communities largely inhabited by African American (and later, Latino) families. One such example concerns the development of low-cost, public housing. Whereas this housing may have temporarily addressed some of the aforementioned problems, such housing was often isolated from more affluent urban neighborhoods and in many instances, created problems for residents due to poor architectural design. Consider high-rise buildings with non-working elevators (forcing residents to negotiate long walks up narrow, poorly supervised stairwells), or low-rise structures with isolated courtyards that invited drug dealing or gang activity.

What ramifications does such neighborhood poverty have on adolescents? As neighborhood poverty increases, so do resident perceptions of social isolation and local violence. The concentration of poverty—whether it is rural or urban—also creates a very low personal property tax base that creates problems for public schools that rely on such resources to properly function. Further, adolescents see little evidence for success, as there are few viable jobs, and limited positive role models in the neighborhood.

Despite these grim realities, it is also true that some communities adjacent to one another can be poor and demographically similar, yet, contain adolescents that are functioning at very different levels. This finding must mean that some neighborhoods have community assets and “protective factors” at work, whereas others lack these resources. What exactly are the characteristics of neighborhoods that we should assess that might positively or negatively influence adolescent development?

Assessing Neighborhood Characteristics

When defining neighborhood characteristics, as well as boundaries, one can rely on census information and educational or law enforcement districting data to provide a picture of neighborhood dimensions and density, as well as resident social class (marked by educational and occupational status), racial/ethnic diversity and residential stability. As indicated earlier, residential stability is akin to “turnover” and marks the tendency for people to stay or vacate the community. Such stability is greatly affected by economic conditions. For example, when there are dramatic increases in home foreclosures then it tends to drive out families with children and adolescents (who have lost their homes) and leaves younger (who rent or live with their aging parents) and older adults (who own their homes). Beyond disrupting the lives of the “displaced” adolescent—who must cope with the family move, new school, etc.—such movement also disrupts school organization and enrollment as there is less property tax collected and fewer neighborhood children attend the school. In any case, social class, racial/ethnic diversity and residential stability represent variables that researchers frequently assess to provide an initial landscape of how neighborhood characteristics influence adolescent development (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000).

However, one difficulty with simply relying on demographic variables to define a community is that a neighborhood may have considerable diversity within its borders (Furstenberg, Cook, Eccles, & Sameroff, 1999). As an example, we work in a neighborhood largely inhabited by poor, Latino families. Whereas there seems to be little diversity in the community, it turns out that the neighborhood contains two rival gangs. Each gang stakes territory to the east or west of a central avenue and these territories completely shape the landscape of the neighborhood. Further, the west side of the neighborhood contains the only community park; adolescents who live on the east side often will not venture across the central street to go to the park or any of the events hosted by the west-side school.

How do we know this information? We use a process called community mapping and rely on the input of community organization leaders, as well as data collection involving children and parents within the community to better understand both neighborhood characteristics and conditions. The latter approach is important because it allows one to assess neighborhood disorder or the relative stability and safety of the community. It is now suspected that neighborhood order or disorder is more heavily predictive of adolescent adjustment than residential stability, income level or ethnic segregation (Roche & Leventhal, 2009). Thus, identifying variables that buffer adolescents from neighborhood disorder is a critical research question. In any case, now that important neighborhood characteristics have been identified, what impact do these variables actually have on youth development?

How Neighborhoods Influence Adolescents

The...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Urban and Underserviced Communities: Theoretical and Conceptual Considerations
• PART I. The Adolescent as an Individual: Theory and Contexts
• PART II. The Fundamental Changes of Adolescence
• PART III. Immediate Contexts for Adolescent Development
• PART IV. Positive Outcomes Associated with Adolescence
• Conclusion
• About the editors and contributors
• Index