School Choice and Segregation: Evidence from the Oakland Unified School District

Jesse Rothstein, Ini Umosen, and Blueprint Affiliate Christopher Walters 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. Using data on kindergarten applicants to the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), they show that offers of spots at first-choice schools boost the likelihood that applicants remain in OUSD.