Urban School Choice and Integration: The Effect of Charter Schools in Little Rock

We examine the impact of charter schools on school integration in the Little Rock, Arkansas metropolitan area. We find that charters are less likely to be hyper-segregated than traditional public schools (TPS), but TPS have compositions more closely reflecting the region. However, differences in each case are slight. Using student-level data to follow students who left TPS for charters, we find that most transfers improve integration levels at the schools they left. This finding is attributed to the fact that most transfers involve minority students leaving predominately minority schools or White students leaving predominantly White schools.