Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

We develop a novel strategy to identify the relative importance of school and neighborhood factors in determining school segregation. Using detailed student enrollment and residential location data, our research design compares differences in student composition between adjacent Census blocks served by different schools to analogous differences between those schools. Our findings indicate that neighborhood factors explain 66% of racial segregation and 42% of economic segregation across schools, mattering even more in urban areas, where school segregation has been especially acute. These findings suggest that the involvement of urban planners is essential when attempting to confront inequality of opportunity through education.