In Simple Words
Imagine choosing between a top-rated restaurant in a distant neighborhood where customers feel out of place versus a local diner where everyone looks and acts like family. Selecting the top-rated meal requires giving up comfortable social surroundings, whereas staying local keeps social comfort at the expense of meal quality.
Research question
When school academic performance correlates negatively with minority student concentration, minority parents face a tradeoff between choosing high-performing schools and selecting schools with majority same-race peers. This tradeoff can cause public school choice programs to widen educational achievement gaps between racial groups.
Participants
N = 36,887 human students (45% African American, 45% white) in grades 4–8 in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, North Carolina.
Study Design
Exploded-mixed-logit demand estimation incorporating quadratic terms for percent black students at each school interacted with student race and income.
Results
African American parents are 10% to 70% less likely to choose a school that is 35% black compared to a school that is 80% black, whereas white parents are two to three times more likely to choose low-minority schools. Consequently, minority lottery applicants who attend preferred majority-black schools experience test score declines of up to 0.143 to 0.230 standard deviations if their parents place low utility weight on academic test scores.
Takeaway
Design school choice policies with targeted information interventions and revised assignment zones to minimize racial composition trade-offs when selecting high-performing academic programs.