Segregated Neighborhoods, Segregated Schools: Do Charters Break a Stubborn Link?

Abstract

Residential and school segregation have historically mirrored each other, with school segregation seen as simply reflecting residential patterns given neighborhood-based school assignment policy. We argue that the relationship is circular, such that school options also influence residential outcomes. We hypothesize that the expansion of charter schools could simultaneously lead to an increase in school segregation and a decrease in residential segregation. We examine what happens when neighborhood and school options are decoupled via public school choice in the form of charter schools using data from the census and the Common Core of Data on a national sample of more than 1,500 metropolitan districts. We find that Black-White school segregation increased and residential segregation declined in response to increases in the charter enrollment share from 2000 to 2010. In districts with charter schools, the average increase in the charter enrollment share corresponded to a 12% increase in school segregation and 2% decline in residential segregation. We find no relationship between charter school expansion and school segregation between White and Hispanic students, perhaps because Hispanic students attend more racially diverse charters than White or Black students. White-Hispanic residential segregation declined as charter enrollment increased. Our results demonstrate that educational policy is consequential for both school and neighborhood population processes. When these two contexts are decoupled via public school choice, school and neighborhood segregation patterns move in opposite directions, rather than mirroring each other. Our findings also provide a cautionary lesson for unfettered expansion of choice without integration imperatives.

Spatial Underpinnings of Social Inequalities: A Vicious Circles of Segregation Approach

“…For example, having the opportunity to choose a school contributes to school segregation when affluent parents living in lower-income neighbourhoods send their kids to schools outside the home neighbourhood (E. Andersson, Malmberg, & Östh, 2012;Maloutas & Fujita, 2012;Maloutas & Lobato, 2015). When school choice is not available or heavily restricted, parents may also start to 'shop' for schools by renting or buying homes in the catchment areas of desired schools (Rich et al, 2021).…”

“…In other words, school choice leads to school segregation through many and often highly localized mechanisms (Wilson & Bridge, 2019), for example when affluent families prioritize the academic quality (Nieuwenhuis & Xu, 2021) and reputation (Bernelius et al, 2021) of the schools where their children study. School reputation, in turn, reinforces residential segregation, meaning that there is a circular relationship between residential segregation and school segregation (Rich et al, 2021; see Figure 2). This circularity emerges since differences in school quality affect residential segregation through prices in the housing market: Neighbourhoods in which schools are perceived as being of a higher quality attract higher-educated and affluent households, leading to higher property prices, which excludes low-income families (Nieuwenhuis & Xu, 2021).…”

“…Residential clustering of high-income households into certain neighbourhoods contributes not only to school segregation, but also to broader inequalities in education. For many reasons, learning outcomes tend to be better in those neighbourhoods where more affluent families reside (Nieuwenhuis & Hooimeijer, 2016;Owens & Candipan, 2019;Rich et al, 2021).…”

“…Based on the analysis of US census data from 1968, 1980 and 1988, he found that schools are highly segregated primarily because of high levels of residential segregation. School segregation is largely driven by the fact that children generally attend nearby schools and, as neighbourhoods are relatively homogeneous in composition, schools are too (Bernelius & Vilkama, 2019;Oberti & Savina, 2019;Rich, Candipan, & Owens, 2021). Ellis, Wright, and Parks (2004) established that there is also a strong connection between levels of residential and workplace segregation.…”

Parental Depression and Contextual Selection: The Case of School Choice

“…Meanwhile, parenting norms around educational investments strengthened, creating additional pressure to optimize for children’s development (Calarco 2018; Lareau 2011). A large body of work has examined the unintended consequences of these shifts for race and class segregation (e.g., Owens 2016; Rich, Candipan, and Owens 2021). Yet no known study has considered how depressed parents, who already endure elevated stress levels, navigate the school ecosystem in an era of expanded choice, complex data, and high-stakes parenting—conditions that foster what Brown (2020:1) called “Kinder Panic.”…”