Prof. Myron Orfield Quoted in an Axios Report About Open Enrollment Effects on School Segregation

Professor Myron Orfield, Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Director, Institute of Metropolitan Opportunity, was quoted in an Axios report about open enrollment among Twin Cities school districts. Nearly 44,000 Twin Cities students crossed over into another district to attend school this year — a number that has grown every year for at least a decade. The steady rise of open enrollment participation is the result of years of work by Minnesota policymakers to give parents more control over where to send their kids to school. But these policies give districts a financial incentive to compete with each other to attract families with each new student bringing additional state funding, and each student lost comes at a cost. Research has shown racial segregation is worsening in Twin Cities schools, and critics fear open enrollment is one reason why. Prof. Orfield, director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, said that its most recent analysis in 2010 found that 36% of white open-enrolled children moved to a district with larger white populations. That’s compared to 19% whose parents chose more-integrated settings.The rest moved to a district with about as many white kids. Prof. Orfield said the number of open-enrolled students statewide has grown 78% since that earlier study and he fears the trend toward segregation is increasing. He said that schools “seem to be growing more segregated all the time.”