Giving poor kids priority at elite public schools fixes segregation without causing the "rich flight" that school boards panic about.
SSRN · March 18, 2026 · 6425009
The Takeaway
It is a standard assumption in urban policy that aggressive integration efforts will drive wealthy families to leave the public system for private schools. However, this simulation of the Oakland school district shows that you can aggressively prioritize low-income students with almost no impact on whether higher-income families choose to stay in the district.
From the abstract
We study the prospects for changes in school priorities to reduce income segregation in a context of centralized school assignment, accounting for behavioral responses to school offers. Promoting integration is a central objective for large urban school districts in the US, and reforms to school assignment priorities are a prominent means of pursuing this goal. Such efforts may be constrained by students' decisions to exit the public school system in response to less-preferred school offers