Are Whites Still Fleeing? Racial Patterns and Enrollment Shifts in Urban Public Schools, 1987-1996

  • The study finds that “white flight” was still occurring in the 1990s.
  • Three variables were consistently found to be important explanations for white enrollment losses—exposure rate to nonwhites, the accessibility to whiter districts, and the overall metropolitan growth rate.
  • There was little variation in White enrollment growth across regions.
  • The loss of white students is not evenly distributed, but systematically related to interracial contact and the ease of avoiding that contact.
  • The study found an overall increase in school segregation, entirely due to “between district’ rather than ‘within district’ segregation increases.
  • The rate of White enrollment decline is affected by the “push” of exposure to non-Whites and the “pull” of predominantly White districts in the area.
  • The district size is important. Larger districts better avoid large losses of White students.