The Impact of Connecticut’s Sheff Choice-Based Desegregation Plan on Racial Segregation

In 1996, the Connecticut Supreme Court ordered the state to remedy to racial segregation in the Hartford metropolitan area. In response, the state designed and implemented a choice-based desegregation program. This article evaluates the long-term impact of Sheff on school segregation in the region. I use publicly available data from the Segregation Tracking Project to construct county-by-year measures of racial segregation for the Sheff region and comparison counties, and estimate the effects of Sheff using the synthetic control method.