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

Abstract

Public school choice is a widely used tool for education reform and may be a way to improve school accountability and efficiency. This article examines what happened to student outcomes when Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, a large and diverse urban school district located in North Carolina, changed its assignment policy to one of open enrollment with mandatory choice. The previous policy used a broad array of magnet schools and a limited amount of mandatory busing to achieve desegregation. The new policy required that all students choose a school, and it specifically avoided using race or ethnicity considerations in assigning students. The article examines the impacts of the new policy on the end-of-grade standardized tests in reading and math. The article uses regression analysis to discover whether the scores of various groups of students increased or decreased after the policy change. The analysis suggests that the "race-neutral" assignment policy was neither neutral in the opportunity it provided students to attend their school of choice nor in its academic outcomes. Anglo students were more likely to receive their first choice of schools and to improve their scores. African American students were less likely to receive their first choice school and their scores declined. Copyright 2006 by The Policy Studies Organization.

Distributive Justice Antecedents of Race and Gender Disparities in First-Year College Performance

“…If this market-based approach to delivering public education would be successful, the state's problems with segregated schooling and unequal funding might vanish, because, at least in theory, market forces would produce more options and enhance productivity. Despite these efforts to provide families with more information about school performance and choices for school attendance, very little changed in terms of actual educational opportunities across schools (Godwin, Leland, Baxter, & Southworth, 2006) or within them (Mickelson, 2001). Around the same time, the state of Texas adopted a similar program under its then-governor George W. Bush.…”

Markets in Education

“…The district set up an extensive programme to inform and assist families in the choice process, including targeted actions such as sending volunteers door-to-door in low-income and non-English speaking communities; setting up booths in shopping malls; organising a fair; and establishing phone hotlines in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. A high 95% of families filled in their forms, with African-American families participating at an even higher level (Godwin et al, 2006). These results indicate not only that a (vast) majority of parents can be reached, but also that extensive information programmes can pay off in terms of parents participating.…”

“…Parents received free transportation to schools within one of four zones and also to magnet schools anywhere in the district. The new regime was found to have increased school segregation along three lines: ethnic, socio-economic, and ability segregation (see Godwin et al, 2006). The dissimilarity index for ethnic segregation increased from 0.382 to 0.481.…”

“…Almost half of all parents did not state their home school as their highest preference. In that case, almost one in two families can be said to participate actively in the public choice programme (Godwin et al, 2006).…”

Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn from America's Metro Areas

“…In 1997, a parent sued the school system when his daughter was denied entrance into a magnet school based on race, which ultimately ended in 2002 with the school district ending mandatory bussing and implementing a more decentralized school-choice plan. The result has been a gradual resegregation of schools in the Charlotte area (Godwin et al 2006). North Carolina's annexation policy has also been under attack.…”