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Dynamic Participation in Inter-district Open Enrollment: Evidence from Michigan 2005-2013

This paper considers the determinants of student participation in Michigan’s large inter-district open enrollment system, known as Schools of Choice. Employing a rich dataset from the Michigan Department of Education, we examine the population of public school students in resident and non-resident school districts between the 2005-06 and 2012-13 academic years. We find substantial evidence that historically disadvantaged students are those most likely to participate in Schools of Choice: African American students and low-income students are more likely than their peers in their resident districts to make an inter-district transfer; they are, however, also the most likely among other Schools of Choice participants to exit the program. In addition, students who are relatively low performing on the state’s standardized exam—especially in mathematics—are most likely to both participate in Schools of Choice and, among participants, the most likely to exit. We conclude by noting that these patterns are similar to those found among the determinants of more general forms of student mobility. +Corresponding author: jcowen@msu.edu; funding for this project provided in part by the Walton Family Foundation (Cowen) and the Institute for Education Science at the U.S Department of Education (Creed). We are grateful for the assistance with data access and data questions provided by the Michigan Department of Education, in particular Erika Bolig and Joseph Martineau, and Melissa Bisson at the Michigan Center for Educational Performance and Information. We are also grateful to Christina Mazuca Ebmeyer, Barbara Schneider, and the Educational Policy Center at Michigan State University for ongoing internal support for this project.