A major debate in school desegregation policy is whether voluntary, market-based mechanisms (such as magnet schools) result in more school desegregation than command-and-control approaches (such as mandatory reassignment). Using data obtained from a national probability sample of 600 school districts, we explore the effects of different types of desegregation plans on White flight, racial imbalance, and interracial exposure from 1968 to 1991 Based on the results of multiple regression analyses, we find that (a) voluntary plans result in lower levels of White flight and higher levels of change in interracial exposure than mandatory-reassignment or controlled-choice plans (which fall between the two approaches) and (b) voluntary plans are not disadvantaged in comparison to mandatory-reassignment or controlled-choice plans in the achievement of racial balance. School desegregation, particularly the court-ordered forced busing that began in the 1970s, has easily been the most controversial issue in public education in this century. Although it no longer receives the national headlines that it did in the 1970s, school desegregation remains an issue that will not go away. Hundreds of school systems, particularly larger ones, maintain active desegregation policies, and many are still under court orders that are over 20 years old. Local controversy flares periodically over such issues as seeking an end to
After the U.S. Supreme Court restricted the use of race in assigning students to schools, there was a surge in advocacy of school integration based on student socioeconomic status (SES). Benefits of socioeconomic integration have been supported by various studies finding significant effects of school SES on achievement after controlling for individual student SES. This article investigates school SES effects using statewide longitudinal achievement data from several U.S. states. School SES effects nearly vanish after controlling for a student's prior achievement or, alternatively, controlling for stable differences among students using fixed effects models. The article concludes that large school SES effects often found in cross-sectional studies are artifacts of aggregation and are not a sound basis for SES-based school integration policies.
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