The Effect of the Residential Mosaic and "White Flight" on Public School Composition: Evidence from Los Angeles County

White Flight in the Context of Education: Evidence from South Carolina

“…This preference theory in education explains white flight from urban schools with predominantly minority students because of white families' motivation for seeking racial homogeneity or religion affiliation (Saporito, Yancey, and Louis 2001). Empirical studies, such as Clotfelter (2001), Fairlie and Resch (2002), Ledwith and Clark (2007), and Wrinkle, Stewart, and Polinard (1999), provide supportive evidence for the preference theory. Fairlie and Resch (2002), for instance, determined that white flight to private schools was partly because of the large concentrations of minorities in urban public schools.…”

“…Recent studies such as Clotfelter (2001), Ledwith and Clark (2007), and Renzulli and Evans (2005) have used the NCES-CCD public school data for the analysis of white flight. The NCES-CCD database provides nationwide yearly public school and school district enrollment information, including race/ethnicity, geographic locales, and numbers of students eligible for federal free or reduced lunch programs.…”

“…Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression methods explored the factors associated with the variation of private school participation rates of white students based on cross-sectional census data in the Columbia Metropolitan Area. Following an approach similar to Ledwith and Clark (2007), the analysis included both neighborhood characteristics (e.g., income and education attainment) and public school attributes (e.g., school quality and percent of minority students) as explanatory variables for obtaining the general underlying causes of private school choice (Table 2). Such an approach underscores that socioeconomic status of neighborhoods and the racial compositions and academic quality of neighborhood public schools are influential in white flight to private schools (Theobald 2005).…”

“…Some of the latest research concludes that both preferences and academic quality play critical roles in shaping the geography of white flight (Renzulli and Evans 2005;Ledwith and Clark 2007). These studies shed light on important factors associated with white flight by using theoretically integrated approaches to the preference theory and the market-based theory.…”

“…In general, recent studies regarding the phenomenon of white flight fall into three categories. One centers on current trends of metropolitan white flight (Clotfelter 2001;Ledwith and Clark 2007;Renzulli and Evans 2005); for instance, after analyzing NCES-CCD public school enrollment data in over 200 metropolitan areas, Clotfelter (2001) concluded that whites are still fleeing. A second group of studies focuses on the determinants of white flight (Bankston and Caldas 2000;Fairlie and Resch 2002).…”