The National Center on School Choice is funded by the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. The Center exercises national leadership in school choice research, including charter and magnet schools, private school vouchers, teacher recruitment, school management, and state policymaking.

Community and Neighborhood Effects of
School Choice

Michael Flicek, Northwest Evaluation Association
Martha McCall, Northwest Evaluation Association

How does open enrollment - the ability to send children to any public school in their district - impact students’ socioeconomic and achievement status within magnet or neighborhood schools? Using NWEA data, we examined this question in one school system serving approximately 11,500 students. The system did not have attendance areas and transportation was provided to a chosen school. With mapping software we divided just over 5,000 elementary students into two groups based on attender status. “Near attenders” went to one of the two schools closest to where they lived. Far attenders did not. Using the proportion of far versus near attenders, we classified schools as neighborhood, magnet, or unclassified.

We found that at magnet schools, open enrollment was associated with higher socioeconomic and achievement status. At neighborhood schools, it was associated with lower status in both areas. However, students in magnet schools—unlike those in neighborhood schools—experienced low achievement growth in both reading and math. Overall attender status did not predict reading or math initial status or growth. Within several school types by socioeconomic status subgroups, however, far attenders had lower achievement growth than near attenders. Our study discusses implications of these findings for future research and policymaking. This report was presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association.