Is There White Flight into Private Schools? Evidence from

Abstract—Using a recently released con dential data set from the Na-tional Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), we nd some evidence of “white ight ” from public schools into private schools partly in response to minority schoolchildren. We also examine whether white ight is from all minorities or only from certain minority groups, delineated by race or income. We nd that white families are eeing public schools with large concentrations of poor minority schoolchildren. In addition, the clearest ight appears to occur from poor black schoolchildren. The results for white ight from Asians and Hispanics are less clear. I