DescriptionThe school-neighborhood bond has been a central feature of the public education system since its origin. Today, the rise in school choice models is leading to an increase in the number of children who attend schools that are detached from a neighborhood. Despite the fact that prior scholarship has not evaluated the utility of the school-neighborhood bond, reformers who promote school choice are dismantling this construct. Disconnecting public schools from neighborhoods affects children and entire communities. While some theoretical and empirical work indicate that positive outcomes are associated with severing the school-neighborhood bond, others indicate that the results of such actions are harmful to children and communities. The most compelling arguments to eliminate school assignment practices based on residence maintain that such actions are necessary to desegregate schools. Conversely, theories of collective efficacy and social capital indicate that zoned schools can serve as anchors of communities and unite neighborhood residents in an effort to work towards the common good. Using New York City as a case study, this dissertation presents a set of analyses that aids in clarifying the positive and negative effects of the school-neighborhood bond. Findings from the analysis of school segregation in New York City indicate that—in the absence of policies requiring school integration—segregation persists regardless of school assignment practices. In addition to demonstrating that school choice models in New York City are associated with higher levels of segregation than neighborhood schools, this dissertation also shows that increased levels of diversity correlate with higher rates of proficiency in math and English language arts. Evidence shows the benefits of school integration; however, there is no indication that the school-neighborhood bond must be eliminated to desegregate schools. This dissertation also presents a geostatistical study analyzing the association between neighborhood collective efficacy and educational outcomes. The analysis uses multiple large-scale datasets to create a measure of neighborhood collective efficacy across elementary school zones. After using a spatial weighting algorithm to estimate neighborhood-level variables within elementary school zone boundaries, these neighborhood-level variables are analyzed along with the school-level data for each community’s corresponding zoned school. A treatment effects model demonstrates that high neighborhood collective efficacy has a significant positive effect on school performance, indicating the value of the school-neighborhood bond. The results of this dissertation have immense policy implications in an age of school choice reform. Evidence from this study suggests the need for a large-scale effort to desegregate schools without dispersing children to educational institutions that are untethered from neighborhood life. The dissertation offers a number of suggestions for achieving this goal.