Seminar: Identifying the sources of school segregation

We develop a framework that decomposes school segregation into five additive sources: i) choice restrictions, ii) noise, iii) residential sorting, iv) preference heterogeneity and v) capacity constraints. We apply this framework to segregation by ethnicity and by social background in secondary schools in Amsterdam. This is a setting where students are free to choose the school they wish and school density is high. Combining register data with students’ rank-ordered preference lists, we find that, despite substantial residential sorting, only 7% of school segregation by ethnicity can be attributed to residential sorting. Forty-two percent is accounted for by choice restrictions due to ability tracking and 46% to preference heterogeneity. Policy simulations show that minority reserves reduce school segregation only marginally whereas minority quotas have a more meaningful impact.