College-educated White households have increasingly opted to live in central urban neighborhoods, transforming many parts of the urban core. While there is emerging evidence that schools may play a key part in this process, little is known about the extent of racial contract between children of gentrifier households and original residents. This…

This report analyzes changing racial composition in a comparable subset of schools to enable policy-relevant comparisons between charter and magnet schools. It reports the levels of segregation and diversity in these two systems, which is important because of strong evidence that diverse schools produce educational gains and substantial lifelong…

The percentage of White residents in the urban core increased during the last three decades. Meanwhile, urban school choice policies have changed school enrollment processes. Scholars must examine how White residents navigate school choice in this context to understand why racial segregation persists. We study White parents in a city with changing…

While suburban schools across the country have become increasingly racially and economically diverse in recent decades, many remain highly segregated. School attendance zone boundaries (AZBs) play a critical role in shaping these patterns of within-district segregation. AZBs are especially important in suburban areas with growing and diversifying…

In 2012, Denver Public School District superintendent Tom Boasberg wrote to his employees about the state of their schools: "Yet there's a great deal of work ahead because our gaps still aren't closing at all. They remain strikingly and distressingly similar to the national data. Our schools still aren't the equalizing force that they need to…

In this research article, Leslie K. Finger and David M. Houston explore how different ideas about the objectives of education can influence families' schooling preferences and choices. For their study they employed a conjoint experiment embedded in an online survey to examine participants' preferences for various school characteristics, including…

Although previous studies have investigated the contribution of several components of the school choice paradigm to school segregation, one critical aspect has not received attention from segregation scholars: schools' priority rules, that is, the rules schools apply in case of oversubscription. We evaluate how three priority rules -- grade-based,…

Purpose: Does the rising share of Latino students in US schools help to integrate previously White campuses or exacerbate racial and economic segregation over time? This article details trends in the segregation of Latino children enrolled in elementary schools, 2000-2015, then examines how evolving patterns differ among the nation's school…

The ethnic and racial makeup of the United States has changed during the last several decades. Scholars have qualitatively shown how these changes affect school districts but have not identified their scale. We examine residential demographic change using a novel dataset derived from a geographic technique that leverages satellite imagery with…

New York City's Pre-K for All (PKA) is the nation's largest universal early childhood initiative, serving over 64,000 four-year-olds annually. Stemming from the program's choice architecture as well as the city's stark residential segregation, PKA programs are extremely segregated by child race/ethnicity. Our current study explores the complex…

Today, our schools are more racially segregated than at any time in the last 40 years, mainly because the neighborhoods in which they are located are themselves racially segregated. Yet, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2007 Parents Involved ruling, prohibited school districts from implementing even modest race-conscious desegregation plans. If…

Scholars have often suggested that racial integration is inherently unstable--a transition point in the racial transformation of neighborhoods and schools. While much empirical attention has been paid to documenting changes in segregation in public school districts, in this study we provide initial evidence focusing on the stability of segregation…

New Jersey's School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) is a "weighted" funding formula, designed to deliver adequate funding based on the unique student needs in every school district across the state. The SFRA included key elements to address long-standing racial and socio-economic disparities in New Jersey's public school system, most notably…

As U.S. suburbs become more racially and ethnically diverse, they have the opportunity to make their schools similarly diverse. But integration is not assured, even in districts with significant demographic diversity. Iris Rotberg draws on Montgomery County Public Schools, a suburban Maryland district, to illustrate the opportunities and risks…

We examine the effects of disseminating academic performance data--either status, growth, or both--on parents' school choices and their implications for racial, ethnic, and economic segregation. We conduct an online survey experiment featuring a nationally representative sample of parents and caretakers of children age 0-12. Participants choose…