Brock Hicks and Michael Lens  •  Education and Urban Society

Incoming! Spatial Enrollment Competition between Charter Schools and Traditional Public Schools

charter schools  •  school enrollments  •  race  •  school choice

The meteoric rise in charter schools has several implications for traditional public schools and their students. One understudied implication is the geographic competition for students. Given traditional public school boundaries are often fixed while charter school boundaries are more flexible, charter schools can draw students away from existing traditional public schools, and we have very little information about how distance matters in the competition for students. Because of this, traditional public schools and school districts have little ability to plan for enrollment changes in the face of charter school growth. Our paper uses data on enrollments and demographics in all charter and traditional public schools in Los Angeles from 2000 to 2013 to better understand these dynamics. We find that traditional public school enrollments clearly decline with competition from nearby charter schools. However, we also observe that charter schools tend to locate where traditional public school enrollments are on the decline. Competition is more relevant for elementary schools at short distances—within about 1 mi appears to be where the associations between charter school enrollments and TPS enrollment declines are the strongest. For middle and high schools, those connections are apparent within 2 to 6 mi in some models.

Brock Hicks & Irene Asuwa  •  Kounkuey Design Inititive 

Pop Bomb or People for Humane Density? Reflecting on World Population Day from high-rise neighborhoods in Nairobi

“Pipeline is a simulation of the future.” So said George Arrabu, President of the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK), at our recent SEE Risk exhibition in Pipeline, a dense high-rise neighborhood in Nairobi. Here at Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), we take this statement not as a prophecy, forecast, or Malthusian alarm bell. We take it as a practical directive. A directive that speaks to the heart of what we do here at KDI — fill knowledge gaps by working with communities living in dense, vulnerable urban settlements. This means connecting situated, lived experiences with broader systems as a primary data source, not a supplementary one. To do this requires deliberate shifts in how we understand knowledge: Recognizing residents as experts of risk, not research subjects. Experts who produce knowledge as co-researchers, shaping what is observed, how it is interpreted, and how it is communicated. This requires holding different ‘knowledges’ together, where lived experience holds equal weight to technical expertise. Citizen science is not a participation method — it fundamentally reshapes what counts as evidence, how knowledge is generated, and who it serves. In SEE Risk, citizen science took center stage; we partnered with residents from Saika and Pipeline, two high-rise estates in Nairobi, to explore systemic urban risk in the context of rapid densification and urban population growth.

Brock Hicks, Sam Greene, and Jess Vujovic  •  PlanAdapt

Loss and Damage after COP28: Where does it sit within the existing landscape for climate action?

I co-authored this blog with PlanAdapt Fellows (I was also the editor). We discuss where loss and damage fits within existing climate finance and climate responses, in particular adaptation efforts. In subsequent blogs, we will explore what and for whom loss and damage funding should be used and how this could be done in practice. Given the troubled history of funding for adaptation, we will discuss how the Loss and Damage Fund can be more accountable and equitable and what it would mean to have locally-led loss and damage action and a finance architecture that prioritizes climate justice over profits.

Brock Hicks  •  Africa is a Country

Ruto's Climate Contradictions and the Green Growth Lie

Part One  •  Part Two

This is a two-part series on how Ruto has used his climate policies to further his own agenda. In part one, I discuss his climate contradictions across crucial sectors, how he has positioned himself as the pan-African climate champion, and his embrace of carbon markets. In part two, I analyze how he is using the ideology of green growth to profit from climate emergency. I then consider alternatives to green growth for a more just transition in Africa. 

The essay was re-published by African Arguments (parts one & two) and The Elephant (part one)

Brock Hicks  •  Self-published

ACS Side Event Debrief — Translating lessons from Mukuru: A panel discussion on opportunities and challenges for locally-led adaptation in urban informal settlements

At the Africa Climate Summit, I convened and moderated a panel discussion with an important cross-section of of parties involved in informal settlement upgrading in Nairobi, a city that is pioneering groundbreaking practices for integrated, inclusive and pro-poor urban planning and development. We focused on two main questions: Is urban upgrading climate adaptation?  And, what are the opportunities, challenges and risks when translating key strategies used in the Mukuru Special Planning Area to other settlements in Nairobi and in cities across Africa? I also discuss how the depoliticised Nairobi Declaration falls short in terms of planning with instead of for the urban poor and how we must be pragmatic instead of normative, meeting people where they are. 

Brock Hicks  •  Center for Cities and Schools, Institute for Urban and Regional Development, UC Berkeley

New Gentrifiers? Studying The Effects of Charter Schools on Neighborhoods in Los Angeles

The number—and the proportion—of students enrolled in charter schools (independently run public schools) is increasing nationwide, particularly in urban school districts. Policymakers have long prescribed new institutional forms as solutions to persistent public policy issues. Market-oriented educational reformers favor charter schools as the answer to the problems in urban public school systems; public and private funds available for constructing and running charter schools continue to increase. Research on student performance in charter schools (CS) compared to traditional public schools (TPS) has found mixed results. For example, the 2013 study from the CREDO Institute at Stanford University found that charter schools outperform TPS in reading and are comparable in math. Researchers have also found that charter schools affect enrollment patterns, segregation, and performance in nearby traditional public schools (see the full report for details). 

However, there is little analysis about how charter schools may affect neighborhoods. It is well understood that school quality is an important factor in how households select neighborhoods in which to live, but little is known about how charter schools affect neighborhood change and household location choice. Could the advent of a charter school draw households with relatively higher incomes, and distinct sociodemographic characteristics, to move into lower-income neighborhoods? Could the search for higher-quality schools outside a household’s neighborhood be the first step in eventual relocation? Could households with school-age children be agents of neighborhood change and new gentrifiers? Or conversely, are startup charter schools opening in already gentrifying neighborhoods? And whether they emerge before, after or during, what role might charter schools play in affecting neighborhood change?

Brock Hicks  •  Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy

The US Food Aid Industry: Food for Peace or Food for Profit?

On February 21st, 69 organizations submitted a letter to President Barack Obama in support of continued funding for Public Law 480 (also known as Food for Peace) and Food for Progress international food aid programs in the FY 2014 budget and opposing rumored proposals to shift resources to local and regional commodity procurement. The signatory organizations were comprised almost exclusively of the iron triangle of US food aid spending recipients (the US agribusiness, shipping, and international development industries). Funding, which is attached to the Farm Bill, has been reauthorized by President Obama under Title VII of the fiscal cliff legislation through this September. However, these food aid programs depend on congressional appropriations, which have only been approved through March 27th. Big changes, or more of the same, could be in store for food aid legislation in the near future.