Reframing Suburbs: Race, Place, and Opportunity in Suburban Educational Spaces

Abstract

Most students in the United States attend suburban schools. However, most education research focuses on urban school districts. This may be in part because many of the core issues that currently drive education research—issues of race and class inequities, social mobility, immigration, English learning—are believed to be “urban” challenges. In this article, we argue that the changing nature of suburban schools and communities, and the history of their creation as education spaces, make them advantageous locations for education researchers to study many pressing issues and expand the ways we understand the intersections of race, place and inequality. We argue that education scholarship across multiple disciplinary orientations, theoretical foci, and substantive concerns can benefit from a deeper engagement with suburban education spaces and the issues and opportunities associated with them.