Giving low-income kids first dibs at elite public schools can kill segregation without scaring off the wealthy families.
March 25, 2026
Original Paper
School Choice and Segregation: Evidence from the Oakland Unified School District
SSRN · 6464798
The Takeaway
School districts often avoid integration policies because they fear 'white flight' or wealthy families moving to private schools. This simulation of Oakland's school system found that you can aggressively prioritize low-income students for top-choice schools with minimal impact on the overall retention of higher-income families.
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 lesspreferred school offers. Usin