Opportunity Seeking Across Segregated Schools: Unintended Effects of Automatic Admission Policies on High School Segregation

Abstract

Automatic admissions policies (AAPs, “percent plans”) redistribute college-going opportunities across segregated high schools to diversify college enrollments, increasing opportunities at predominantly minority high schools. If students “game” AAPs by attending schools with increased opportunities, AAPs could alter racial sorting across high schools. Comparative interrupted time series analyses provide evidence that Texas’s and California’s AAPs reduced Black–White segregation in highly segregated school districts. These effects were concentrated in sparsely populated areas in Texas, and they were modest in California, so it seems unlikely this significantly undermined AAPs’ ability to reduce racial disparities in college-going opportunities. It shows, however, that strategic responses to policies that redistribute opportunities in segregated contexts can create tension between segregation and inequality of opportunity.