White Flight in the Context of Education: Evidence from South Carolina

Abstract

In the context of education, white flight refers to decreasing white enrollment in poor-performing, inner-city public schools. This article investigates white flight and the concomitant movement to better performing public schools and racially homogenous private schools using elementary school enrollment data from South Carolina, particularly the Columbia Metropolitan Area. The findings indicate a consistent loss of white enrollments from poor-performing, inner-city schools. The private school enrollment rates of whites are also sensitive to both the academic quality and the proportion of minorities in neighborhood schools as well as the racial composition of the neighborhoods.

Key Words:

• white flight
• locales
• academic quality
• public schools
• private schools

Acknowledgements

I thank Dr. David Cowen, Dr. Lorin Anderson, Dr. Michael Hodgson, Dr. Frank Hardisty, and Dr. Lisle Mitchell of the University of South Carolina for their invaluable advice and suggestions. A dissertation research grant from the Association of American Geographers and funding from the South Carolina Education Oversight Committee helped support this research.

His research interests are urban neighborhood crime and spatial analysis of education issues

Notes

¹ Some of the explanatory variables in Table 2 were highly correlated. For example, the Pearson Correlation Coefficient between percent of minority population and percent of minority students in neighborhood school is 0.752**, and the coefficient between percent of minority students and percent of students eligible for free/reduced lunch is 0.831**.

**Significant at 0.01 level.

* Significant at 0.05 level;

** Significant at 0.01 level.

1. Based on the size and urbanization level of the community in which a school is located, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) assigns each school and school district, public and private, a locale code. The NCES school locale code is comprised of eight categories: 1 means large city; 2, mid-size city; 3, urban fringe of large city; 4, urban fringe of mid-sized city; 5, large town; 6, small town; 7, rural outside Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA); 8, rural inside MSA. In this analysis, to interpret better the geographic and demographic contexts of white flight, locale 1 and 2 combined into urban schools; locale 3, 4, and 8 into suburban schools; locale 5, 6, and 7 into rural schools.

2. I conducted a Pearson Bivariate Correlation to find the relationships between PACT scores in 2001, 2002, and 2003. The correlation between the scores of 2001 and 2002 was 0.907 and between 2001 and 2003 was 0.869 (both were significant at 0.01 level for 1-tailed test).

3. In 2000, the Columbia Metropolitan Area had a population of 536,691 and seven school districts (Richland 1, 2 and Lexington 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

4. Each public school has an attendance zone, and students who live within the attendance zone are eligible to attend the public school (often referred to as a neighborhood school) or any private school, home school, or other choice options if available. Nationwide, in 2003, 73.9 percent of students attended their public attendance zone schools, 10.8 percent enrolled in private schools, and the remainder of students registered in selected public schools (Wirt et al. 2004).