De facto segregation persists in schools across the United States, leading many Black and Hispanic students to attend lower quality schools with fewer resources and opportunities. Public school attendance is typically determined by a student’s residence, but inter-district open enrollment gives families the option to select a school outside their local area. In theory, choice within the public school system has the potential to break down racial segregation and provide underserved students with better opportunities; however, decisions made by families can unintentionally perpetuate existing achievement gaps and segregation. To better understand these choices, a new mixed-methods study explores how peer diversity influences parental school choice decisions.
The researchers conducted a survey of 3,000 parents and guardians who completed high school inter-district open enrollment applications in the 2022–23 cycle in New York City’s public school system, and combined it with a decade of administrative data, which they used to measure student-body composition as well as school quality using value-added models for student achievement. Then, using an original conceptual framework and vignette experiment within the survey, the researchers explored a variety of factors that might impact a family’s choice in school, such as the awareness of available school options, perceptions of the school’s quality and discrimination, beliefs about the probability of admission, among several other topics. Unlike many studies that infer the reasons behind parental choices, this approach directly connects survey responses to corresponding administrative data and thus offers a new perspective on family’s educational decision-making.
The analysis yielded two key findings. First, middle school diversity plays an important role in shaping high school enrollment choices for students and their families. When a Black or Hispanic student attends a majority White and Asian middle school, this leads to them being more likely to apply to and enroll in higher-quality, more selective schools with more White and Asian students. While White and Asian families’ high school choices are less influenced by the racial composition of middle schools, attending a majority Black and Hispanic middle school increased the proportion of Black or Hispanic students in White and Asian applicants’ top three choices by about three percentage points.
Second, the researchers found that racial disparities in parent’s choice of school are driven by two main factors: (1) information gaps about the schools that are available and (2) a parent’s preference to enroll their kid in a school with peers who share similar racial demographics to their own. Although families of all racial backgrounds valued similar characteristics in schools, Black and Hispanic families were less likely than their White and Asian counterparts in the same neighborhood to be aware of majority white and Asian schools or high-value-add schools. For instance, Black and Hispanic families were 8 percent less likely to have heard of schools with high White and Asian enrollment or high college enrollment rates, and 7 percent less likely to know schools with high value-added.
Furthermore, although most families did not explicitly indicate that a school’s racial composition was a factor in their decision-making, the differences in the demographics of schools chosen by students of different races does suggest that it impacts a family’s choice. For example, White and Asian respondents consistently favor schools with more white and Asian students, while Black and Hispanic respondents are less likely to choose majority white or Asian schools when their information on academic performance is limited.
In short, all survey respondents wanted their students to attend a safe school with high achievement levels, but the remaining racial differences in school choices appear to be driven by the preference of parents to keep their kids enrolled with students of the same race.
These results lead to two main takeaways. First, the study demonstrates the important role that peer diversity has on a family’s educational choices. While school choice is meant to give disadvantaged students access to greater social capital, the study reveals that making the best choice for a student is also greatly impacted by who and what information families have access to, prior to any choice being made. For instance, over three-fourths of parents surveyed reported discussing high-school applications with other parents at their middle school. Therefore, creating opportunities for families to connect with a more diverse network of parents and peers could help close information gaps.
Second, because attending a middle school with more diverse peers decreased the preference for high schools with higher enrollment of students from one’s own race, promoting diversity in earlier grades—especially middle school—could be a key strategy for advancing high school desegregation. By finding ways to foster diversity in earlier grades and promote more equitable choice, we can lay the groundwork for a more integrated school system that benefits all students.
SOURCE: Clemence M. Idoux and Viola Corrandini, “Overcoming Racial Gaps in School Preferences: The Effect of Peer Diversity on School Choice,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series (November 2024).
