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2001 - Are Whites Still Fleeing? Racial Patterns and Enrollment Shifts in Urban Public Schools, 1987-1996

Attribution: Clotfelter, Charles T.
Researchers: Charles T. Clotfelter
University Affiliation: Duke University
Email: clotfelter@law.duke.edu
Research Question:
Examines recent trends in enrollment and racial composition in urban public schools. Does desegregation contribute to white enrollment losses?
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Journal of Policy Analysis and Management
Journal Entry: Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 199-221
Year: 2001
Findings:
  • 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.
Keywords: Contact TheoryDesegregationRacial CompositionResegregationResidential SegregationWhite FlightRegions: NationalMethodologies: QuantitativeResearch Designs: Secondary Survey DataAnalysis Methods: Regression Sampling Frame:Metropolitan Areas
Sampling Types: NonrandomAnalysis Units: SchoolData Types: Quantitative-Longitudinal
Data Description:
  • The principal source of data is the National Center for Education Statistics’ Common Core of Data (NCES 1999).
  • The data were collected for similarly defined metropolitan areas at two points in time to assess changes over that period.
  • 238 metropolitan areas (3,933 districts) are in the sample.
  • The dataset includes information on the racial composition of schools.
  • Examine data for 1987 and 1996 on racial composition and enrollment in all schools and school districts in 238 metropolitan areas.
  • DV: Change in White public school enrollment.
  • IV: Measures of composition and segregation.
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:
Archives: K-12 Integration, Desegregation, and Segregation Abstracts
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