How does the culture of a child’s neighborhood affect their schooling? More specifically, if an area is very diverse, does that change the teaching strategy used by teachers? Outside of racial diversity, how does class difference and gentrification change a school? Unique to New York City, how does the ability to go to school in any of the five boroughs impact the composition of a school relative to the composition of a neighborhood?
Our area is in the middle of a drastic change in culture. It was a mainly Hispanic area for quite some time. Due to the spreading nature of New Chinatown, the demographic is changing. There are more Chinese businesses, more Chinese living there, and more Chinese children in the schools. In addition to this, on the fringes of the neighborhood, there are new luxury apartments and expensive boutiques cropping up. These stores and apartments are clearly outside the limit of the average resident of this zone – this shows gentrification in full swing. Though most of the gentrifiers are childless, some children may attend the local schools. There are three schools located within our area; two regular public schools and one charter school. To contrast this area with relatively high diversity, we will look at the area of Williamsburg in Brooklyn – an area where gentrification has reduced the diversity to almost zero. By comparing these two areas, we hope to see what he outcome of these changes will have.
Primary sources will mainly consist of test scores and governmental and community reviews of schools within the areas paired with interviews of education officials within the areas. Hopefully interviews with students will also be possible. In addition, academic materials on teaching students who have different culture will likely be used to aid our understanding of the curriculum differences between the two schools.
