School Choice and Neighborhood Relationships in Urban Areas: An Exploratory Study in Arizona

Traditional school enrollment practices, especially in urban areas, were guided by neighborhood boundaries and students had to attend their zoned school. However, there has been an increase of “school choice” policies across the United States, in which parents are allowed to openly enroll their children in schools regardless of boundary restrictions. Concomitantly, there is an increase in loneliness and a decrease in social connectedness in individualistic, market-based economic countries. Using qualitative interview responses from Arizonan urban residents ( n = 109), this research investigates how feelings of neighborhood connectedness are related to school choice. Parents who send their children to their assigned school ( n = 56) tend to like their neighborhoods more and have deeper relationships with neighbors and so do their children. Whereas, parents who choose other schools for their children ( n = 53) and their children have fewer neighborhood relationships. These findings contextualize how school choice negatively correlates to neighborhood connectedness.