Constrained Agency and the Structures of Educational Choice: Evidence From New York City

Many school districts consider family preferences in allocating students to schools. In theory, this approach provides disadvantaged families greater access to high-quality schools by weakening the link between residential location and school assignment. We leverage data on the school choices made by over 233,000 New York City families across a 4-year period to examine the extent to which the city’s school choice system fulfills this promise. Although families can apply to any school, oversubscribed and high-quality schools enroll smaller proportions of students from traditionally disadvantaged families. We explored three mechanisms to explain this inequitable distribution: application timing, the school matching structure, and neighborhood stratification. We find that all three mechanisms have a disequalizing influence and propose several potential policy solutions.