This paper examines heterogeneity of school preferences between ethnic and social groups and quantifies the importance of this heterogeneity for school segregation. We use rich data from the secondary-school match in Amsterdam. Our key findings are that heterogeneity of preferences for schools is substantial and that 40% of school segregation by ethnicity and close to 25% of school segregation by household income, can be attributed to it. Ability tracking is the other main determinant of school segregation. Results from policy simulations indicate that minority quotas reduce segregation within ability tracks considerably, but this comes at the cost of many students receiving less-preferred assignments and a higher share of unassigned students.

本文研究了种族和社会群体之间学校偏好的异质性，并量化了这种异质性对学校隔离的重要性。我们使用阿姆斯特丹中学比赛中的丰富数据。我们的主要发现是，学校偏好的异质性是巨大的，按种族划分的学校隔离占40％，按家庭收入划分的学校隔离占近25％，可以归因于此。能力追踪是学校隔离的另一个主要决定因素。政策模拟的结果表明，少数派配额大大减少了能力范围内的隔离，但这是以许多学生获得较差的作业和较高比例的未分配学生为代价的。