search cancel cancel-medium

White and Higher Income Students are More Likely to Benefit From OneApp’s Half-mile Admissions Priority

A Research Snapshot by Alica Gerry, Cathy Balfe, and Lindsay Bell Weixler finds that White and higher income students are more likely to benefit from a recent OneApp policy change that allows schools to prioritize admission for applicants who live within a half mile of the school.

Policy Brief Cover

White and Higher Income Students are More Likely to Benefit From OneApp’s Half-mile Admissions Priority

Published
by Alica Gerry, Cathy Balfe, Lindsay Bell Weixler

A recent pol­i­cy change in New Orleans allows schools to pri­or­i­tize admis­sion for appli­cants who live with­in a half mile of the school. To see which stu­dents are most like­ly to ben­e­fit from this new pol­i­cy, which first took effect last school year, Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty researchers Ali­ca Ger­ry, Cathy Balfe, and Lind­say Bell Weixler exam­ine 2019 – 20 Kinder­garten appli­ca­tions in the OneApp, the cen­tral­ized enroll­ment sys­tem for New Orleans’ almost all-char­ter school dis­trict. They find that hav­ing this half-mile pri­or­i­ty ulti­mate­ly increas­es the like­li­hood that an appli­cant will secure a seat at a high-demand school, and this pol­i­cy is more like­ly to ben­e­fit White and high­er income stu­dents than stu­dents of col­or and low­er income stu­dents, respec­tive­ly. The researchers define a school as high demand” if all of its open seats were filled dur­ing the OneApp’s main round. The key find­ings are as fol­lows: — High­er income Kinder­garten appli­cants were 6.1 per­cent­age points more like­ly to live with­in a half mile of a high-demand school than low-income appli­cants. — White Kinder­garten appli­cants were 5.7 per­cent­age points more like­ly to live with­in a half mile of a high-demand school than appli­cants of col­or. — All nine high-demand ele­men­tary schools that give half-mile pri­or­i­ty to appli­cants are locat­ed in zip codes with income lev­els above the city aver­age. In 2019 – 20, 4,131 fam­i­lies applied to Kinder­garten seats in the OneApp. Of these, 1,368 are pre‑K stu­dents who received guar­an­teed seats in their cur­rent schools. Only 11% of the remain­ing 2,763 appli­cants lived with­in a half-mile of a high-demand school offer­ing the pri­or­i­ty. Two-thirds of those with the half-mile pri­or­i­ty (7% of all appli­cants) chose to apply to near­by high-demand schools, and when they did apply, they were like­ly to be admit­ted. Exclud­ing those who matched to a school high­er on their list, 65% of appli­cants to a high-demand school were admit­ted if they had the half-mile pri­or­i­ty, com­pared with an aver­age match rate of 28% for all appli­cants to these schools. Ulti­mate­ly, rough­ly 70 stu­dents, rep­re­sent­ing about 2.5% of all Kinder­garten appli­cants, were admit­ted to a high-demand school through the half-mile pri­or­i­ty. In oth­er words, there are a small num­ber of stu­dents who ben­e­fit from this pol­i­cy, but the ben­e­fit to those stu­dents is sub­stan­tial. Local pol­i­cy­mak­ers and stake­hold­ers should con­sid­er the poten­tial equi­ty impli­ca­tions of admis­sions pri­or­i­ties and the priv­i­leges they may grant to cer­tain stu­dent groups, espe­cial­ly as they affect stu­dents’ access to high-demand schools.

Related Publications