Cynthia Boyd has written about open enrollment in MinnPost: Minnesota’s new ‘white flight’: school open-enrollment program.

A new University of Minnesota analysis finds that more white students than students of color across the Twin Cities metropolitan area are leaving racially diverse districts to enroll in predominantly white districts, a variation of the “white flight” of the 1970s and 1980s when white families up and sold their homes and moved away from changing demographics in urban school districts or sent their children to private rather than public schools.

Tim Post at MPR picks up on the UofM open enrollment report with Study: Open enrollment increasing racial segregation in Twin Cities schools.

Open enrollment was set up in the 1980s to let families choose the district they want their children to attend. But the study, the first of its kind in Minnesota, said one result of open enrollment is white students leaving racially diverse districts.

The university study does not question the validity of the state’s open enrollment policy, but does ask whether it has had some unintended consequences.

KARE11 covered the story the next day: Open enrollment leads to racial segregation in Twin Cities schools.

The study shows that white families in Minneapolis, St. Paul and St. Cloud tend to use open enrollment to leave diverse districts. They send their children to predominantly white affluent schools. The reverse is also true; students who leave suburban white schools for city districts are typically students of color.

Update, the Star Tribune also ran a story by Steve Brandt on 1/19: Open enrollment hurts balance in Twin Cities.

The study’s main findings:

• The three large city districts of Minneapolis, St. Paul and St. Cloud each lose substantial numbers of students under open enrollment. Loss of white students to nearby districts represents a large majority of each district’s net losses.
• Suburban districts losing the most students to open enrollment include a group of diverse inner- and middle-suburban districts which lose substantial numbers of students.
• Districts gaining the most students from open enrollment are predominantly white districts that receive students from more diverse districts.

EMID schools would probably be an exception to this trend, though it is hard to know because EMID and other integration districts, which are schools of choice, were not included in the underlying UofM study (PDF).

Open Enrollment and Racial Segregation in the Twin Cities: 2000 – 2010