I investigate a possible unintended consequence of Proposition 2½ override behavior—that it led to increased segregation in school districts in Massachusetts. This can occur because richer, low-minority towns tend to have more successful override votes that attract similar households with relatively high demands for public services who can afford to pay for them. To evaluate this hypothesis, I collect panel data on override behavior from 1982 to 2012 and merge this with data on school district enrollments and other district- and town-level characteristics. I find evidence that passing overrides earmarked for schools results in a significant decrease in the percent of nonwhite students enrolled in Massachusetts school districts. This happens in districts with below-average nonwhite school enrollments, and hence increases segregation.

Reorganizing primary school grade spans is a tractable and relatively inexpensive school reform. However, assessing the effects of reorganization requires also examining other organizational changes that may accompany grade span reforms. Using data on New York City public schools from 1996 to 2002 and exploiting within-school variations, we examine relationships among grade span, spending, and size. We find that school grade span is associated with differences in school size, class size, and grade size, though generally not with spending and other resources. In addition, we find class size and grade size differences in the same grade level at schools with different configurations, suggesting that school grade span affects not only school size but also class size and grade size. We find few relationships, though, between grade span and school-level performance, pointing to the need to augment these analyses with pupil-level data. We conclude with implications for research and practice.