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Open Enrollment and Fiscal Incentives

In the 1960s many large-city school systems adopted policies permitting students to transfer from their neighborhood schools to others they found more desirable, if the second school was not overcrowded. The adoption of these open-enrollment plans was motivated in part by the desire to eliminate racial segregation in the schools resulting from residential segregation and in part to allow students with special educational needs and interests to take advantage of specialized curricula offered only in certain schools.' While these programs did accomplish the second goal, they did not much alter patterns of segregation. Apparently, an effort that relies on voluntary integration has little hope of success. In a 1973 survey of desegregation techniques used by urban schools, G. Foster concluded that open enrollment "has never accounted for a significant amount of desegregation" (1973). There has been general skepticism among policymakers about the potential for accomplishing desegregation by voluntary means. Before there was even much evidence to indicate what its impact might be and before any efforts were made to significantly influence voluntary actions, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights expressed its skepticism in a delineation of six major limitations of such plans (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 1967). Yet the policy of open enrollment as a means to desegregate the schools still offers a handsome alternative to mandatory busing, which has stirred such intense controversy and perhaps even increased racial tension; and its potential needs to be explored further. What mainly needs to be explored is whether some incentive program that heightens the attractiveness of a transfer plan can accomplish what has not been accomplished by simply offering the option to transfer. In particular, it seems urgent to examine how selected fiscal incentives for open enrollment might help to achieve greater racial and socioeconomic integration.