School Segregation in the Era of Color-Blind Jurisprudence and School Choice

Bibliographic Data

ID6404579
AuthorsCharles T Clotfelter (0000-0002-4723-2947, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA, corresponding author), Steven W Hemelt (0000-0001-6756-1871, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA), Helen F Ladd (Duke University, Durham, NC, USA), Mavzuna R Turaeva (Duke University, Durham, NC, USA), Mavzuna Turaeva (Duke University)
Year2023
Volume59
Issue2
Pages406-446
Publication date2023-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueUrban Affairs Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1078-0874 • E-ISSN: 1552-8332
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/10780874211049510
OpenAlexW3155264814
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited46

The decades-long resistance to federally imposed school desegregation entered a new phase at the turn of the new century. At that time, federal courts stopped pushing racial balance as a remedy for past segregation and adopted in its place a color-blind approach to evaluating school district assignment plans. Using data that span 1998 to 2016 from North Carolina, one of the first states to come under this color-blind dictum, we examine the ways in which households and policymakers took actions that had the effect of reducing the amount of interracial contact in K-12 schools within counties. We divide these reductions in interracial contact into portions due to the private school and charter school sectors, the existence of multiple school districts, and racial disparities between schools within districts and sectors. For most counties, the last of these proves to be the biggest, though in some counties private schools, charter schools, or multiple districts played a deciding role. In addition, we decompose segregation in the state's 11 metropolitan areas, finding that more than half can be attributed to racial disparities inside school districts. We also measure segregation by economic status, finding that it, like racial segregation, increased in the largest urban counties, but elsewhere changed little over the period

Charter · Charter school · Civil rights · Demographic economics · Desegregation · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Metropolitan area · Political science · Private school · Race (biology · Racial composition · School choice · School district · Separate but equal · Sociology · State (computer science · Critical Race Theory in Education · Demography · Gender Studies · Law · Public Administration · School Choice and Performance · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies

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