How the Availability of School Choice Shapes School and Neighborhood Demographic Change

• In Event: Community Perspectives on School Desegregation and Integration: School Choice, Housing Mobility, and Community Engagement

Abstract

The high levels of racial segregation in U.S. schools and neighborhoods are a direct result of policies that link these two contexts together with residence-based school assignment, yet school choice has complicated this landscape. Using originally-collected longitudinal data on the racial composition of nearly 3,000 schools and their neighborhoods, I examine how the availability of nearby charter and private schools shapes White flight between 2000 and 2010. I find that growth in nearby charter schools is positively associated with White flight, such that neighborhoods with more charter schools lose more White children both in schools and neighborhoods. However, I also find that private schools are associated with lower White flights from neighborhoods, as well as schools through an indirect effect on neighborhood change. I also investigate how the racial compositions of these school choice options influence my findings, and I find that these results are primarily driven by the growth of predominantly non-White charter schools and predominantly White private schools. Together these findings suggest that charter and private schools, while both offering parents' alternative school options, operate quite differently within the landscape of racially segregated neighborhoods and schools.

Author

• Elly M Field, Brown University
  Presenting Author