Do parental school switching decisions worsen between group inequalities?
Background expectations: parental choice leads to increased segregation and increased inequality in school access
1. Schelling logic:
2. Moving to opportunity (Counter logic)
3. Combined Logic
Post assignment shifts produce:
Along the way:
Berlin school system
We have data for every entering student with basic information from these forms for Tempelhof-Schöneberg for 2009 - 2018
Change requests are in fact remarkably common (and constant over time)
Suggestive of increasing bimodality (though can also be explained by residential segregation)
From Berlin Kommunalstatistik department, imputed to street / plz level.
year | strname | plz | likely_migrant |
---|---|---|---|
2013 | Aachener Straße | 10713 | 0.4835143 |
2013 | Aalemannufer | 13587 | 0.2924586 |
2013 | Aarauer Straße | 12205 | 0.1128205 |
2013 | Aarberger Straße | 12205 | 0.4786325 |
2013 | Abbestraße | 10587 | 0.6486486 |
2013 | Abendrotweg | 12307 | 0.0333333 |
No relationship between school demography and main school quality measure
Though related to some other measures
We are not seeing
as a result of parental choices and bureaucratic responses to them
We seem to be seeing the opposite!
Estimated share migrants in class in assigned and actual schools, given own identity.
Outgroup exposure in class in assigned and actual schools, given own identity.
Inequality in access appears to go down (eliminated)
Relationship between demography and quality of assigned, requested, and actual school
Assigned school | School requested | School attended | |
---|---|---|---|
likely_migrant | -0.41*** | 0.06** | -0.01 |
(0.02) | (0.02) | (0.03) | |
R2 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
Adj. R2 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
Num. obs. | 31610 | 29200 | 23258 |
RMSE | 0.65 | 0.61 | 0.61 |
***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05 |
Do actual movements produce more segregation?
RDD idea is to examine the differences in request behavior for parents who sit just on either side of a school zone border.
Is a parent more likely to seek a switch if they are very very close to a catchment zone with a more German school compared to a neighbor just inside that zone?
Causal effect: of having a school with given features (not: effect of these features)
Note: sorting works in our favor here
Migrants possibly more sensitive to moderate quality differences
Lets make sense of all this
Requests given dyad demographies
Requests given dyad scores
Migrants less sensitive to from demography
Migrants move more and less sensitive to to demography
Migrants leave nongerman schools at lower rates but in higher numbers
We implement a model to predict parental choice given all options in a given radius (2.5 km) as a flexible function of
The model allows for all threeway interactions involving 1 and two of 2 - 5, year and school fixed effects, with clustering by student.
In their choices, (likely) migrants weigh quality more than identity; non-migrants do the opposite.
Migrant kids in nongerman schools are:
Condition on the same from and to schools in a given year:
Simple | ‘From’ fixed effects | ‘From/To’ fixed effects | |
---|---|---|---|
(Intercept) | 0.88*** | ||
(0.02) | |||
likely_migrant | -0.42*** | -0.39*** | -0.43*** |
(0.05) | (0.06) | (0.06) | |
R2 | 0.02 | 0.07 | 0.14 |
Adj. R2 | 0.02 | 0.06 | 0.12 |
Num. obs. | 3273 | 3273 | 3273 |
RMSE | 0.47 | 0.46 | 0.45 |
***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05 |
Condition on the same from and to schools in a given year:
Though related to some other measures
Though related to some other measures
Do actual movements produce more segregation?
Most movements are to more German schools (turquoise)
Exit from migrant schools, dependent on distance
Model 1 | Model 2 | Model 3 | Model 4 | Model 5 | Model 6 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
(Intercept) | 0.44*** | 0.44*** | 0.44*** | |||
(0.02) | (0.02) | (0.02) | ||||
treat | 0.11* | 0.06*** | 0.12** | 0.07*** | 0.12** | 0.05*** |
(0.05) | (0.01) | (0.04) | (0.01) | (0.04) | (0.01) | |
dist_signed | 0.00· | -0.00 | 0.00 | -0.00 | 0.00 | -0.00 |
(0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | |
treat:dist_signed | -0.00 | -0.00· | -0.00 | -0.00· | -0.00 | -0.00 |
(0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | |
abs_share_diff | 0.00* | 0.00** | 0.00* | 0.00* | ||
(0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | |||
treat:abs_share_diff | 0.01** | 0.00* | 0.01** | 0.00· | ||
(0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | |||
dist_signed:abs_share_diff | 0.00 | -0.00 | 0.00 | -0.00 | ||
(0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | |||
treat:dist_signed:abs_share_diff | -0.00 | -0.00 | -0.00 | -0.00 | ||
(0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | (0.00) | |||
likely_migrant | 0.26** | -0.21*** | ||||
(0.09) | (0.05) | |||||
treat:likely_migrant | 0.14 | 0.16· | ||||
(0.18) | (0.08) | |||||
dist_signed:likely_migrant | -0.00* | -0.00* | ||||
(0.00) | (0.00) | |||||
abs_share_diff:likely_migrant | -0.00 | 0.01** | ||||
(0.01) | (0.00) | |||||
treat:dist_signed:likely_migrant | -0.00 | 0.00 | ||||
(0.00) | (0.00) | |||||
treat:abs_share_diff:likely_migrant | -0.00 | 0.01 | ||||
(0.01) | (0.01) | |||||
dist_signed:abs_share_diff:likely_migrant | -0.00* | -0.00** | ||||
(0.00) | (0.00) | |||||
treat:dist_signed:abs_share_diff:likely_migrant | -0.00 | -0.00* | ||||
(0.00) | (0.00) | |||||
R2 | 0.02 | 0.13 | 0.04 | 0.13 | 0.05 | 0.13 |
Adj. R2 | 0.02 | 0.13 | 0.04 | 0.13 | 0.05 | 0.13 |
Num. obs. | 15163 | 15163 | 15163 | 15163 | 15093 | 15093 |
RMSE | 0.49 | 0.46 | 0.48 | 0.46 | 0.48 | 0.46 |
N Clusters | 220 | 220 | 220 | |||
***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05; ·p < 0.1 |
More nongerman and low scoring schools have net losses (possibly with high targets in anticipation of losses)
Reduced segregation comes at individual level, not school level
Segregation at Primary Schools in Germany: The Effect of Parental Choice of School
The Berlin case study shows that many native German families take active steps to circumvent the official (binding) assignment of primary schools. As a result one in five primary schools enrols twice as many migrant students than are found in its catchment area.