Contextual Mobility and School Choice: Evidence from New York City

• In Event: 4385 - Education in a Changing World

Abstract

Little is known about students’ school “contextual mobility” - the extent to which features of earlier social contexts are predictive of later social contexts – under school choice policies. We analyze student-level administrative data from New York City documenting students’ high school choices and assignments, and describe the relationship between students’ middle and high school racial composition net of students’ individual characteristics. We find that students choose high schools with the same racial majority as their middle school regardless of their individual race, with the exception of students attending majority black middle schools. Notably, black students from all middle school types are almost twice as likely to be matched to majority black high schools as they are to choose them.

Authors

• Jennifer Jennings, Princeton University

• Chelsea Daniels, New York University