School assignment in Boston and New York City came to national attention in the 1970s as courts across the country tried to integrate schools. Today, district-wide choice allows Boston and New York students to enroll far from home. Although 1970s desegregation efforts likely benefited minority students, urban school transportation is increasingly…

Catholic schools have seen more than a 30% decline in enrollment over the past 20 years. While some of the decline in enrollment may have been spurred by secular trends or the Church abuse scandal, the increase in schools of choice, principally public charter schools, may explain at least some of this decline. In this paper we estimate the effect…

Indiana's Schooling Deserts uses Geographic Information System (GIS) software to generate drive-time distances to different schooling types to examine the state's robust K-12 choice environment, under which more than 100,000 families are choosing a school for their children other than one that has been residentially assigned. The maps produced for…

We measure the relationship between travel time to school and students' likelihood of transfer (and where they transfer to), attendance, and test scores in Washington, DC. Travel time to school is especially salient in DC, where roughly three-quarters of students attend a school other than the one tied to their neighborhood. A longer commute is…