She received her PhD from the University of Chicago, where she was an Institute for Education Sciences Predoctoral Fellow. Her research combines the sociology of education and urban sociology to study the roots of educational inequality and examine the dynamic connections between communities and schools that shape opportunities to learn both in and out of the classroom. She has studied the effects of concentrated neighborhood poverty on achievement as well as the relationship between neighborhood demographic change, changes in school-level achievement, and the geography of elementary school openings and closings. Her current projects focus on the impact of violent crime in neighborhoods and schools on student achievement and the relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and patterns of high school attendance and student mobility.