 School boards and student segregationHugh Macartney and John Singleton Journal of Public Economics, 2018, vol. 164, issue C, 165-182 Abstract: 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. Keywords: School segregation; School boards; Regression discontinuity; Elections (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:164:y:2018:i:c:p:165-182 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.05.011 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier |
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