Merging neighborhood schools to reduce socioeconomic segregation: Evidence from Charlotte, North Carolina [Job Market Paper]

2024 ยท 2 min read
Abstract
Since the end of court-mandated desegregation, many U.S. school districts have re-segregated along racial and economic lines. This paper examines the impacts of a 2018 policy in Charlotte, North Carolina which merged student populations from neighboring schools with differing socioeconomic statuses (SES). I find that the policy significantly reduced economic segregation at merged schools. However, it also led to a sharp decline in enrollment as families, primarily low-SES ones, opted out of attending these schools. I also find that students from predominantly low-SES neighborhoods (who would have likely attended the low-SES school in absence of the merging) experienced declines in standardized test performance and increased short-term out of school suspension rates, whereas those from predominantly high-SES neighborhoods showed modest gains in test scores and no change in suspension likelihood. Teacher retention increased at the merged schools. Finally, neighborhoods that were previously zoned to majority low-SES schools experienced an increase in house prices after the policy was implemented.

Interactive Map

The interactive map below displays public elementary schools in the continental United States that could be paired on socioeconomic status (SES) under the following criteria: 1) each pair consists of two elementary schools within the same district that are no more than two miles apart, where one school has a majority of low-SES students (determined by the proportion of students eligible for free or reduced lunch) and the other has a majority of high-SES students; and 2) the difference in the proportion of low-SES students between the two schools in each pair must be at least 40 percentage points. If there are multiple potential pairs in an area, the pairs are selected to maximize the total number of pairs. I used nonfiscal data from the Common Core of Data (CCD) for the 2018-19 academic year to generate these pairs, as many districts did not report lunch program eligibility during the pandemic.

This procedure yields 1,412 pairs across 551 districts in 44 states. The two schools in a pair sit a median of 1.6 miles apart and differ by a median of 49 percentage points in their share of low-SES students.

Reading the map: each pair is drawn as a line connecting its two schools. The majority low-SES school is a solid orange circle, and its higher-SES partner is a hollow blue ring. At the national view, schools are grouped into clusters labeled with the number of pairs in that area; zoom in past level 11 and each cluster resolves into the individual schools and the links between them. Clicking any mark opens the pair, showing both school names, the district, each school’s share of low-SES students in 2018-19, the distance between them, and the gap. The sidebar filters by state or by school, district, and city name, and the by-state bars are clickable.