Seasonal Learning Differences in Neighborhoods, Social Class & Race

This study examines how the impact of the social organization of learning differs within neighborhoods across two seasonal periods and between them according to their racial and social class composition. The study’s central premise is that the unacknowledged yet fairly systematic seasonal variation in the neighborhood social organization of learning presents an opportunity to measure a neighborhood’s impact when its orientation toward learning is characterized less by “directed development” and more by an “ecological curriculum.” Having these qualities, estimates of summer learning might suggest a more prominent role for neighborhoods than typically found in neighborhood effects research.