Sarah Reber

Court Ordered Desegregation: Successes and Failures Integrating American Schools since Brown versus Board of Education

This paper uses a new methodology to assess the effects of court-ordered desegregation plans on segregation and white enrollment. I then assess what characteristics of districts are predictive of having more or less white flight when desegregation plans are implemented. I exploit the wide variation in the timing of implementation of desegregation plans to identify their effects. I find strong evidence that segregation fell when districts implemented desegregation plans; plans were also associated with significant white enrollment losses that offset about one-third of the within-district reductions in segregation. White flight was particularly severe in districts with more public school districts in the same metropolitan area.