Open enrolment policies assume that students living in disadvantaged areas can access better schools outside their neighbourhood. However, characteristics of individuals, quality of schooling and neighbourhood characteristics interact in very complex ways to produce heterogeneous patterns of school choice in local educational markets. This article analyses how the geography of educational opportunities, the socioeconomic background of students' families and the characteristics of their residential areas, impact on the travel-to-school distance in Barcelona. Based on a unique data set of school and student registers from Barcelona's local education authority, our study shows that distances travelled by students with the same social background vary depending on the characteristics of educational supply and the income of the neighbourhood. While socially advantaged students tend to travel longer distances than their peers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, geographical and educational factors mediate to produce high heterogeneity in mobility patterns. Our findings cast doubt on the supposed virtue of school choice to reduce education inequalities and underline the need to consider the diversity of local microeducation markets in policymaking and planning.

中文翻译：

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选择退出邻里学校：当地教育市场在学生流动中的作用

开放招生政策假设生活在贫困地区的学生可以进入附近更好的学校。然而，个人特征、学校教育质量和社区特征以非常复杂的方式相互作用，在当地教育市场产生了不同的学校选择模式。本文分析了教育机会的地理、学生家庭的社会经济背景及其居住区的特点，如何影响巴塞罗那的旅行到学校的距离。我们的研究基于巴塞罗那当地教育机构的一套独特的学校和学生登记数据集，表明具有相同社会背景的学生所走的距离因教育供应的特点和社区的收入而异。虽然具有社会优势的学生往往比社会经济背景较低的同龄人旅行的距离更长，但地理和教育因素在流动模式中产生了高度的异质性。我们的研究结果对学校选择减少教育不平等的所谓美德提出了质疑，并强调了在政策制定和规划中考虑当地微型教育市场多样性的必要性。