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Key Findings

1. On average, black, Hispanic, lower-income, and lower-achieving students were more apt to change schools. White, Asian, gifted, and English language–learner students were less likely to change schools.
2. Overall, high-achieving students switch to high-quality schools whereas low-achieving students transfer to low-quality schools.

School choice policies have become a popular topic in recent decades as a solution to address chronically low-performing schools and to improve student achievement by providing students access to higher-quality schools. Much of this discussion is underpinned by a premise that increasing options will lead to increased student mobility as families look for new and better schools. Prior research, however, has found that, on average, students who choose to move to a higher-quality school are higher achieving, less likely to live in poverty, and more likely to be white. Moreover, several scholars have raised equity concerns related to school choice policies and questioned whether improvements in student achievement — particularly at charter schools — have been driven either by "cream-skimming" the high achievers through selective enrollment or by "pushing out" low-performing students in schools of choice. These differing mobility patterns, coupled with the potential for school-initiated sorting, imply that school choice may lead to unintended consequences over time, such as increasing segmentation and inequities in school populations.