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2006 - Sinking Swann: Public School Choice and the Resegregation of Charlotte's Public Schools

Attribution: Godwin, R. Kenneth, Leland, Suzanne, Baxter, Andrew, & Southworth, Stephanie
Researchers: Andrew BaxterR. Kenneth GodwinStephanie SouthworthSuzanne Leland
University Affiliation: University of North Carolina Charlotte
Email: godwink@uncc.edu
Research Question:
Evaluates two public school assignment policies (open enrollment & mandatory choice, not using race or ethnicity in assignment) using data from CMS.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Review of Policy Research
Journal Entry: Vol. 23, No. 5, pp.983-997
Year: 2006
Findings:
  • Policy change to mandatory choice caused increase in the number of segregated schools in the district.
  • While new assignment policy may have been “race neutral” its impacts were not.
  • Widespread public school choice in CMS increased socioeconomic and ethnic sorting among students and amplified the differences in test-score gaps among different set of students.
  • Being from a family that actively seeks out alternative to the assigned school is likely to have a positive impact on student’s academic outcomes, but attending a choice school does not have a positive impact.
  • Public school choice in Charlotte was a policy failure. In addition, to failing to meet its academic goals, the choice system also failed to gain community support, especially among minorities.
Keywords: AccountabilityAchievement GapChoiceDesegregationMathReadingResegregationRegions: SouthMethodologies: QuantitativeResearch Designs: Secondary Survey DataAnalysis Methods: Fixed Effects Regression Models Sampling Frame:Charlotte Mecklenburg School District
Sampling Types: PopulationAnalysis Units: StudentData Types: Quantitative-Longitudinal
Data Description:
  • Individual level data on CMS students and the schools to which they were assigned in 2000, 2001 and 2002
  • Data included end of grade test scores for each student as well as basic student information.
  • Data allows to calculate whether the student chose an alternative to her assigned school prior to 2002, and whether the student chose an alternative to her home school in 2002.
  • Students in CMS who were in 5th through the 8th grade in the Spring of 2003.
  • DV: standardized scores of the end of grade math and reading (EOG scores).
  • IV: student’s ethnicity, gender, grade, free and reduced lunch status, residence, percent of students eligible free lunch, whether the student enrolled in her first-choice school, and whether the student previously attended a magnet to thematic school.
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:
Archives: K-12 Integration, Desegregation, and Segregation Abstracts
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