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We use data on vote outcomes from a universal voucher initiative to examine whether white households with children in public schools will use vouchers to leave predominantly nonwhite schools, thereby contributing to more racially and ethnically segregated schools. We find that white households are more likely to support vouchers when their children attend schools with larger concentrations of nonwhite schoolchildren, an effect that is absent for nonwhite households and households without children. This result may be driven less by race or ethnicity and more by other characteristics, such as student performance, that are correlated with race or ethnicity. (c) 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires states to establish goals for all students and for groups of students characterized by race, ethnicity, poverty, disability, and limited English proficiency, and requires schools to make annual progress in meeting these goals. In a number of states, officials have argued that increased federal education funding is not sufficient to cover the costs imposed by the new legislation. In this paper, we use data from Texas to estimate the additional costs of meeting the new student performance standards. We find that these costs substantially exceed the additional federal funding.

In this study, a cost function is used to estimate the costs for California districts to meet the achievement goals set out for them by the state. I calculate estimates of base costs (i.e., per pupil costs in a district with relatively low levels of student need) and marginal costs (i.e., the additional costs associated with specific student characteristics) for poverty, English learners, and special education and then compare these estimates with the findings from cost studies in other states, which have used a variety of methods, and with other cost studies in California. Because of institutional constraints in California, the cost function estimate of total costs to achieve adequacy (which relies critically on the estimated relationship between spending and outcomes) may be quite imprecise. Nevertheless, the cost function estimates of base and marginal costs are not inconsistent with other studies, though they fall on the low end of the spectrum.