The school, the metropolis, and the vulnerable neighborhood

This paper presents the results of a study aimed at exploring the neighborhood effect hypothesis, grasping if and how inequalities in the level of social vulnerability of school's neighborhoods impact both the education offered by school and student's performance. To do this, quantitative and qualitative research procedures were employed to collect data in the outskirts of the city of São Paulo. The results of the analysis showed that the higher the level of social vulnerability in the school's neighborhood, more limited was the quality of the educational opportunities created by the school. Results also demonstrated that the negative effect of the vulnerable territory on the school happens through five articulated mechanisms: the school's isolation within the territory; the low rates of preschool enrollments; the segregation of its intellectual population in the teaching establishments located therein; the disadvantageous position occupied by schools localized in neighborhoods with high social vulnerability in the hidden educational quasi-market; and the school's difficulties, given its unfavorable position, to offer the conditions needed to secure the institutional model of operation that guides school organization.

educational inequities; social disadvantages; metropolis' schools