The Carrot or the Stick for School Desegregation Policy?

Abstract

The relevance of the public-choice model of decision making for school desegregation is tested by comparing the desegregation effectiveness of voluntary plans, which depend on parents choosing magnet schools, to mandatory reassignment plans, which "force" parents to send their children to desegregated schools. A desegregation plan based primarily on voluntary transfers to magnet schools will produce greater long-term interracial exposure than a mandatory reassignment plan with magnet components, in part because of the greater white flight from the mandatory plans. In short, the public-choice model of decision making is more successful in producing interracial exposure than the command-and-control model.

School Desegregation and Intergroup Relations: A Review of the Literature

“…First, of course, is the possibility of resegregation that may follow desegregation if whites choose to leave the desegregating school or system, either by moving elsewhere or transferring to a private school. Research on just how rapid and how major such white flight is has produced a longstanding major controversy (Armor, 1980(Armor, , 1988Rossell, 1983Rossell, , 1985Rossell, , 1990aSmylie, 1983). However, for the purposes of this paper, it seems sufficient to say that there is substantial evidence that, especially in nonmetropolitan desegregation plans, some white flight due to school desegregation is likely to occur.…”

“…Differential minority and majority group immigration and birth rates, differential usage of private schools, and the differential flow of white and minority families to the suburbs have led to increasing racial isolation in the schools in many cities. Although "white flight" from desegregated school systems accounts for some of this change (Armor, 1988;Rossell, 1990a), the increasing concentration and isolation of minority groups in large urban centers is also a pronounced and common pattern in cities with no mandatory desegregation plans such as New York and Chicago. In the southern and border states, the impact of these demographic changes on the city schools has been mitigated in a number of areas by mandatory metropolitan area desegregation plans that have merged and integrated previously separate city and suburban school districts and by the long-standing existence of county-wide school districts that include both the center city and many suburban areas.…”

School Segregation in the Era of Accountability

“…Segregation tends to respond to policy in counterintuitive, although logical, ways. For instance, a major outcome of policies designed to reduce segregation (e.g., busing) led to increased rather than decreased segregation (Clotfelter 2001;Rossell 1990). Similarly, instructional policies such as tracking that sort students also increase segregation, albeit within-school segregation (Oakes 1995).…”

Is School Desegregation Still a Viable Policy Option?

“…Looking across a variety of school districts, most researchers now claim that controlled choice plans produce more racial balance than does mandatory reassignment (Rossell 1990;Armor 1995), or even that purely voluntary plans produce more racial balance than controlled choice plans (Rossell 1995, 43-76;but see Orfield, Eaton, et al 1996). Others have demonstrated that decentralization of curriculum, budgetary, and personnel decisions to the parents and staff of individual schools can in some cases improve the quality of education and the willingness of parents to send their children to a previously disfavored school (Bryk et al 1993).…”