Linked Fates: How the Policy Link Between Schools and Neighborhoods Shapes Racial Segregation Dynamics

Abstract

Neighborhoods and schools both play a powerful role in shaping the life trajectories and opportunities of children. In the United States, these contexts are not only important determinants of social and racial inequality, but schools and neighborhoods are also closely linked together by residential-based school assignment policies. Most school districts in the U.S. assign students to schools based on where they live, which builds segregated schools from the basis of segregated neighborhoods. In this dissertation, I trace the impacts of this link between neighborhoods and schools at the individual-, neighborhood-, and school district-levels to understand how these policies shape dynamics of school and neighborhood segregation. Together, these investigations situate the relationship between neighborhoods and schools within a complex system where individual decisions and aggregate racial composition exist within a feedback loop with each other and across different domains of social life. For parents, residence-based school assignment policies mean that neighborhood and school choices are explicitly linked, and a choice in one domain will constrain the options available in the other. Therefore, I first consider the impacts of the relationship between neighborhoods and schools from the individual level in the first empirical chapter (Chapter 2). Using an original stated choice experiment, I examine how parents consider schools and neighborhoods simultaneously and how the characteristics of one context shape their preferences for the other. I show that parents’ preferences for schools and neighborhoods are intertwined, such that the characteristics of a school shape parents’ preferences for the neighborhood, and neighborhood characteristics shape parents’ preferences for the school. In Chapter Three, I move to the neighborhood- and school-levels to consider how school choice influences demographic change in both schools and neighborhoods. Using original longitudinal data that captures the racial composition of nearly 3,000 schools and their attendant neighborhoods, I examine how the availability of nearby charter and private schools shapes White flight in schools and neighborhoods between 2000 and 2010. I find that greater availability of school alternatives weakens the relationship between neighborhood and school change, such that neighborhood change is less predictive of school change in neighborhoods with many charter or private schools. I also find that greater access to charter schools is negatively associated with White flight, such that neighborhoods with more charter schools lose fewer White students in the school and White children in the neighborhood. However, I also find that private schools are associated with a greater loss of White students from public schools. Finally, in Chapter Four, I consider how the racial composition of the metropolitan area is associated with processes of racial turnover in local schools and neighborhoods. Using longitudinal data on nearly 3,000 schools and neighborhoods within 22 urban school districts, I show that racially diverse school districts experienced lower rates of White flight, even after accounting for socioeconomic, school choice policy, and geographic differences between the districts. I also provide preliminary evidence suggesting that greater representation of Latinos in these districts may be associated with lower rates of White flight from urban neighborhoods. Together, these chapters illustrate that the complex system generated by the feedback loops between schools and neighborhoods must be considered in both research and policymaking around these influential contexts.