In 2001, a North Carolina court granted unitary status to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, which effectively ended a thirty-year policy of race-conscious school assignment. The authors of this paper look at whether the ruling caused families to move to areas with a higher proportion of same-race residents, thereby increasing segregation in the district’s neighborhood-zoned schools. Examining data from over 100,000 elementary students in the years 1999–2009, the analysts found little overall increase in segregation. The number of white relocations didn’t increase (remaining at 5–10 percent), and although white families were twice as likely to move to a whiter zone in the years following the ruling than before it, the same went for nonwhite families. In other words, the proportion of families moving in the direction of the whiter schools increased for all races, keeping increased segregation at bay. This positive outcome is not enough to satisfy the authors of the paper, though, who still bemoan the reversal of race conscious enrollment policies—and who decide to editorialize instead of sticking to the facts.
SOURCE: David D. Liebowitz and Lindsay C. Paige, “Does School Policy Affects Housing Choices? Evidence from the End of Desegregation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg,” American Educational Research Journal 51(4), 2014: 671–703.