School boards and student segregation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Macartney, Hugh; Singleton, John D.
• 署名单位: Duke University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Rochester
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.05.011
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 165-182
• 关键词: School segregation; School boards; regression discontinuity; ELECTIONS

摘要

This paper provides the first causal evidence about how elected local school boards affect student segregation across schools. The key identification challenge is that the composition of a school board is potentially correlated with unobserved determinants of school segregation. We overcome this issue using a regression discontinuity design at the electoral contest level, exploiting quasi-random variation from narrowly-decided elections. Such an approach is made possible by a unique dataset, which combines matched information about North Carolina school board candidates with time-varying district-level racial and economic segregation outcomes. Focusing on the political identity of school board members, regression discontinuity estimates reveal that (relative to their non-Democratic counterparts) Democratic board members decrease racial segregation across schools. Our findings suggest that school boards realize such reductions in segregation by shifting attendance zones (which we infer without the need for exact geocoded boundaries) and that white families differentially exit the traditional public school system for local charter schools in response. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.