Universal Vouchers and Racial and Ethnic Segregation

Abstract

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 Effects of Public School Choice on Those Left Behind: Evidence from Durham, North Carolina

“…At both the elementary and middle school levels, Black students are more likely than White students to opt out of their assigned schools, a finding consistent with some other studies (Brunner, Imazeki, & Ross, 2006;Campbell et al, 2005). One possible explanation is that constraints on their residential choices make Black families less happy with their assigned schools than White families who are more able to move to the attendance zone of the school they most prefer.…”

The Capitalization of School Quality into Renter and Owner Housing

“…Reback () examines the adoption of a public school interdistrict choice program in Minnesota and finds an increase in housing value where students are able to transfer to preferred school districts and a decline in districts that accept transfer students. Brunner, Imazeki and Ross () provide evidence that white household support of voucher programs is higher when their children attend schools with high concentrations of nonwhite students. The authors argue, however, that their findings are driven by student performance, which correlates with race or ethnicity.…”

School Choice: Supporters and Opponents

“…Most previous studies examine support for California's Proposition 38 in 2000 (Brunner and Sonstelie 2003;Brunner, Imazeki, and Ross 2010;Brunner and Imazeki 2008). These studies ask how people intend to vote, which is similar to our study's asking people about whether or not they support school choice.…”

“…In addition, Brunner, Sonstelie, and Thayer (2001) present a partial equilibrium model that shows that the introduction of a voucher would increase house prices in low-performing school districts, suggesting that high levels of proficiency passage are probably negatively related to support for school choice. Some studies like Brunner, Imazeki, and Ross (2010) and Brunner and Sonstelie (2003), do not know where their survey respondents live, so they cannot directly match their respondents to school district. We know the address of each respondent, so we are able to directly match respondents to catchment areas and thus to proficiency test scores.…”

“…However, we adjust standard errors using bootstrapping, in part because of potential standard error bias from inclusion of the inverse Mills ratio. 9 A final issue to consider is the effect of Tiebout sorting, as discussed in Brunner, Imazeki, and Ross (2010). There is potential bias from unobserved household preferences and attributes.…”