Sean Gill, Jordan Posamentier, Paul Hil

Urban schools have been the center of investment and concern in public education for the past two decades. Yet many suburban districts now rival urban districts in the challenges they face, having experienced dramatic population changes in just the past decade, with fast growing numbers of English Language Learners and students living in poverty attending suburban schools.

Our new paper reviews the trends around these changing student populations and the accompanying demands facing suburban public school systems. For example:

Between 2000 and 2012, populations living below the federal poverty line grew nearly three times as fast in suburbs as in cities.