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How Has Centralized Enrollment Affected New Orleans Schools?

This report examines what happened when schools that had enrolled a highly disproportionate share of the system's white students entered the city's centralized enrollment system. It finds that the schools entering that system (OneApp/NCAP) led to increased access to those schools for Black and other nonwhite families.

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How Has Centralized Enrollment Affected New Orleans Schools?

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by Jane Lincove, Jon Valant

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The Edu­ca­tion Research Alliance for New Orleans (ERA-New Orleans) and the Nation­al Cen­ter for Research on Edu­ca­tion Access and Choice (REACH), two lead­ing orga­ni­za­tions ded­i­cat­ed to advanc­ing objec­tive and rig­or­ous edu­ca­tion research, are pleased to announce the release of two new reports that are part of a series about how stu­dents are assigned to schools. ​“In cities across Amer­i­ca, fam­i­lies face numer­ous chal­lenges when nav­i­gat­ing the decen­tral­ized school choice sys­tems. These chal­lenges include gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion about all the school options, man­ag­ing mul­ti­ple appli­ca­tion process­es, and secur­ing trans­porta­tion,” said Jane Arnold Lin­cove, lead author of The Effects of Uni­fied Enroll­ment Sys­tems on New Orleans Schools report. ​“Since par­ents don’t have equal access to infor­ma­tion, time to ded­i­cate to school choice, and trans­porta­tion, stu­dents might not have equal oppor­tu­ni­ties to ben­e­fit from school choice .” This report exam­ines what hap­pened when schools that had enrolled a dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of the sys­tem’s white stu­dents entered the city’s cen­tral­ized enroll­ment sys­tem. It finds that the schools enter­ing that sys­tem (OneApp/​NCAP) led to increased access to those schools for Black and oth­er non­white stu­dents. While schools have been reluc­tant to give up con­trol over enroll­ment, these schools did not see declines in white enroll­ment or aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance after join­ing the enroll­ment system.

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