Polarization in School Board Elections and Impact on Public School Enrollment

• In Event: Politics, Governance, and Policymaking in Education

Abstract

School board elections in the United States have become increasingly polarized. A growing number of candidates campaign in support of “parental rights,” a controversial agenda centered on issues of race, gender, and sexuality. Although a large literature documents the effects of polarization on voting and civic engagement, less is known about whether partisan identification affects costly, seemingly non-political decisions like sorting into neighborhoods and schools. Existing evidence on affective polarization largely relies on survey responses, leaving open the question of whether individuals act on these preferences when faced with significant financial and logistical tradeoffs. This paper examines whether the election of a polarizing school board candidate drives families out of the traditional public schools governed by that board. I construct a novel dataset identifying all 2022 school board candidates in California and their stances on parental rights using online sources and an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered large language model (LLM). Employing a regression discontinuity design, I estimate the causal impact of electing a parental rights candidate on subsequent enrollment in traditional public schools. I do not find evidence of a causal effect on overall enrollment. However, responses vary depending on the type of locale, consistent with differences in families’ ability to exit and the availability of alternatives. In urban districts, a parental rights victory decreases traditional public school enrollment by approximately 3.1%, or approximately 300 students, and increases public charter school enrollment by a similar magnitude. I also find that Black student enrollment declines in higher-income Black communities following the election of a parental rights supporter, suggesting that responses are shaped by both political salience and the capacity to act on it. This paper provides causal evidence that school board election outcomes can influence household schooling decisions in specific contexts, contributing to a growing literature on how affective polarization shapes high-cost, real-world behavior beyond expressed attitudes.

Author

• Kalie Pierce, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
  Presenting Author