Who would be left behind by enhanced private school choice?

Debate over school choice is central to many discussions of public elementary and secondary educational reform. The debate has largely focused on conceptual arguments rather than careful empirical research that attempts to sort out competing claims. An important unresolved issue is the question of "cream skimming": Who will move and who will be left behind as a result of enhanced school choice'? This paper uses data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS:88) to estimate a model of public-private school choice which is used to simulate who would likely leave public,schools as a result of enhanced private school choice. Building upon the work of K. Train et al. (1987, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 69, 383-391), we employ a probit model with latent explanatory variables to account for the unobserved attitudes of parents and their children regarding education. The model allows us to consider such latent interests in education. as well as the academic and socioeconomic characteristics of those students who would likely switch to private schools. Our findings indicate that concerns about "bright flight" or academic cream skimming in response to increased school choice appear to be overstated. However, we estimate that there would be substantially more economic and racial segregation of students, as movers tend to be white and have higher incomes than those who are left behind. (C) 2001 Academic Press.