1 Motivation

2 Setting and data

2.1 Parental choices

Berlin school system

• students assigned based on small catchment zones
• can request a change: select up to three alternatives, with explanation
• requests approved or not
• students stay in or exit system (e.g. private, or change Berzirk)

2.2 Parental choices: forms

2.3 Parental choices: data

We have data for every entering student with basic information from these forms for Tempelhof-Schöneberg for 2009 - 2018

• Assigned school
• Change request
• Change preferences (1, 2, 3)
• School ultimately attended
• Street address (not house number or demographic information)

2.4 Parental choices: snapshot

Change requests are in fact remarkably common (and constant over time)

2.5 Schools in Tempelhof-Schöneberg

2.6 School quality

2.7 School quality snapshot

2.8 Official school data

• As available to parents: includes school demographics, location, languages, absentees, …

2.9 Official school data snapshot

2.10 Official school data snapshot

Suggestive of increasing bimodality (though can also be explained by residential segregation)

2.11 Demographics data

From Berlin Kommunalstatistik department, imputed to street / plz level.

3 Major patterns

We are not seeing

1. Increased access inequality
2. Increased segregation

as a result of parental choices and bureaucratic responses to them

We seem to be seeing the opposite!

3.1 Outcomes 1: Increased segregation?

Estimated share migrants in class in assigned and actual schools, given own identity.

3.3 Joint shifts

Do actual movements produce more segregation?

4 Causal analysis? RDD results

• 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)

4.1 RDD results: All (demography)

4.2 RDD results: By subgroup

4.3 RDD results: All (quality)

4.4 RDD results: By subgroup

4.5 RDD summary

• Evidence that all types are, on average, likely to move to more German school
• Evidence that all types are, on average, likely to move to a higher scoring school
• Little difference for migrants / natives
• However we are not capturing yet the general relations between both quality and demography on decisions

5 Matching results

5.1 Overall pattern

Migrant kids in nongerman schools are:

• requesting transfers to German schools at lower rates
• less successful in their applications
• nevertheless transferring in higher numbers

5.3 Success differentials

Condition on the same from and to schools in a given year:

[Recall likely migrant range is not full 0-1 range]

6 Explanation

Lets make sense of all this

We run a statistical model of multinomial choice taking account of:

• quality and demography simultaneously
• all options in neighborhood of each parent

We essentially ask: given all available options, when do parents choose to make a request of any one option.

7 Discussion

7.1 Limitations

• Geographic scope small
• Identity data is imputed
• Migrant / Nonmigrant categories too coarse: “Homophily” among migrants stretches concept
• Quality data cannot capture all dimensions of quality

7.2 Implications

• Story is positive despite institutional inequalities: in initial assignments and responses to requests
• For all that: still high levels of segregation
• Possible that native discrimination is costly on its own terms

8 Additional slides