School Choice and Segregation: How Race Influences Choices and the Consequences for Neighborhood Public Schools

Abstract

This dissertation examines the relationship between school choice and race. I examine whether the racial composition of schools influences choices and whether choices of private and public choice schools lead to greater segregation and stratification in neighborhood schools. I improve on existing research by adopting the theoretical framework used in neighborhood preferences literature to distinguish between race and race-associated reasons as motivations for avoiding racially integrating schools. This study utilizes geocoded data from the Philadelphia Area Study (PAS) and elementary school catchment maps to examine families' preferences and behaviors in the context of the actual conditions of their assigned schools. Catchment maps are integrated with Census data to determine whether choice schools have a role in white flight and segregation and stratification in neighborhood schools. The findings suggest that families are most likely to avoid neighborhood schools with high proportions of racial minorities. However, attitudes regarding racial climates are more consistent predictors of preferences than the actual racial composition of local schools. Highly segregated neighborhood schools satisfy families who desire racially homogeneous school climates, as do private schools. Families who seek diverse environments are more likely to look to charter and magnet schools. The white flight analysis shows that whites are more likely to leave schools that have modest proportions of black students, and less likely to leave schools that are already integrated. These results suggest that whites react especially strongly to schools with low levels of integration, and those who remain in the few racially balanced schools do so out of a preference for diversity or because they do not have the resources to leave. Public choice schools spur white flight in urban areas, but actually reduce flight in suburban schools. Finally, I find that choice schools do not uniformly affect the degree to which racial groups are spatially segregated from whites, and they also do not uniformly affect the degree to which racial groups attend more or less disadvantaged schools than whites. This suggests that segregation and stratification are two distinct aspects of racial inequality and should be considered separately when evaluating the effectiveness of choice programs.