Indirect Effects of Segregation on Associations Between School Choice and Test Score Gaps

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: The Effects of Ideology and Market Pressure on School Racial Composition and Culture

Abstract

School choice is expanding rapidly in the U.S. and is often linked to the resegregation of public schools. This secondary data analysis examines whether racial/ethnic segregation related to charter and magnet school enrollment exacerbates racial/ethnic test score gaps at the district level using data from the Stanford Education Data Archive (Reardon et al., 2018) and the U.S. Department of Education’s Common Core of Data (2017). The findings suggest that charter school enrollment is associated with larger white-black test score gaps while magnet school enrollment is related to larger white-Hispanic test score gaps. Furthermore, district-level segregation is a mechanism through which charter and magnet school enrollment are associated with larger racial/ethnic test score gaps.

Authors

• Lorraine Reese Blatt, University of Pittsburgh

• Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, University of Pittsburgh