Racial Sorting in School Choice: How Do School and Neighborhood Characteristics Affect Segregation?

• In Event: 21020 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 16: Racial Inequities and School Choice: Exploring the Dynamics of Segregation, Perception, and Community

Abstract

Despite their potential to be organizations for integration, U.S. public schools remain persistently segregated, often exceeding the racial isolation already embedded in neighborhoods. The mechanisms driving resegregation in contemporary school choice systems remains underspecified. This study examines how school choice policies shape racial sorting in Denver Public Schools (DPS), a gentrifying, majority-minority district with a unified enrollment system that streamlines access to both traditional public and charter schools.

Using school enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics and neighborhood demographic data from the U.S. Census (2012–2024), this study assesses how DPS’s school choice policy structures racial sorting among schools and neighborhoods. By employing a four-category typology differentiating schools based on organizational type (charter vs. traditional public) and enrollment structure (neighborhood-assigned vs. choice-mediated), this analysis aims to disentangle whether charter schools’ higher segregation levels stem from market conditions or organizational factors.

Preliminary findings suggest choice-mediated schools exhibit greater racial sorting than neighborhood-assigned schools, particularly in racially mixed areas. Charter schools deviate more from neighborhood racial composition than traditional district schools, indicating both market conditions and organizational factors contribute to segregation. Notably, while school choice’s school-neighborhood decoupling intensifies White racial sorting in racially mixed neighborhoods, it also reduces isolation in some contexts by enabling Black and Hispanic students to access schools in predominantly White neighborhoods at higher rates than their neighborhood share suggests.

By analyzing segregation within each school’s local context, this study underscores the importance of context-sensitive measures for assessing racial sorting in school choice systems. Public schools are one of the few policy avenues to pursue meaningful racial integration, making it critical to examine how school-level factors shape this potential. As school choice expands, understanding how enrollment policies and organizational structures shape racial sorting is essential for designing systems that promote integration rather than deepen isolation.

Author

• Maggie Wood, Washington University in St. Louis