How Educational Choice Reshapes Residential Segregation's Causes and Consequences: Evidence from Los Angeles County

Although choice-based school enrollment systems have substantially weakened the ties between local neighborhoods and local schools, most urban inequality research still assumes parents’ choices about where to live are closely linked to their assessments of nearby schools. In this presentation, Jared Schachner, a doctoral student in sociology and social policy and Meyer Doctoral Fellow, revisits this assumption. Using unusually rich administrative datasets from sprawling and diverse Los Angeles County, he estimates that 40 percent of all Angeleno children attend non-neighborhood or private schools. This rate is markedly higher among white and Asian children residing within the most racially diverse neighborhoods, suggesting racial bias may compel these parents to opt out of the local neighborhood school. However, racial bias is not the whole story because the most cognitively skilled parents of white and Asian children also are more likely to select non-neighborhood schools regardless of their communities’ racial diversity.

Bring your lunch, dessert provided

This event is part of our Housing Research Seminar Series, which are held on Fridays at lunchtime, during the academic year, and are livestreamed on Twitter. Watch the video.

Image by Traveling Lifestyle

Image Credit: Viktor Vincej