Reber, Sarah J. 2005. “Court-Ordered Desegregation Successes and Failures Integrating American Schools since Brown versus Board of Education.” Journal of Human Resources 40(3): 559-590.

This paper uses a new methodology to assess the effects of court-ordered desegregation plans on segregation and white enrollment. I then assess what characteristics of districts are predictive of having more or less white flight when desegregation plans are implemented. I exploit the wide variation in the timing of implementation of desegregation plans to identify their effects. I find strong evidence that segregation fell when districts implemented desegregation plans; plans were also associated with significant white enrollment losses that offset about one-third of the within-district reductions in segregation. White flight was particularly severe in districts with more public school districts in the same metropolitan area.

Sarah J. Reber is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. The author is grateful to David Cutler, Amy Finkelstein, Claudia Goldin, Caroline Hoxby, Larry Katz, Anna Maria Mayda, Nora Gordon, Kiki Pop-Eleches, Dean Yang, Tara Watson and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and discussions and to Eanswythe Grabowski and Mohan Romanujan for resurrecting the data. Margo Schlanger provided invaluable assistance in understanding the legal history. Financial Support from the National Science Foundation, the American Educational Research Association, and the Spencer Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning October 2005 through September 2008 from Sarah J. Reber, UCLA School of Public Affairs, Department of Public Policy, Los Angeles, CA 90095, sreber@ucla.edu.