Research

Job Market Paper

Polarization in School Board Elections and Impact on District Enrollment

School board politics in the United States have become increasingly polarized. A growing number of candidates are campaigning under the banner of “parental rights,” a divisive policy agenda centered on issues of gender, race, and sexuality; others run explicitly in opposition. While polarization’s effects on voting and civic engagement are well documented, less is known about how it shapes everyday household behavior. This paper examines whether the win or loss of a polarizing school board candidate will drive families out of a school district. 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 district enrollment. I find evidence of a response only in populations under financial stress. In districts with a parental rights win, I find enrollment of socioeconomically disadvantaged students is 14.4% larger compared to districts with a parental rights loss. In high cost-of-living districts, I find Hispanic student enrollment is 6.6% larger in districts with a parental rights win while Black student enrollment is 17.1% smaller. These findings suggest that while school board election outcomes are less salient than financial pressures in shaping family decisions around schooling, they can serve as a tipping factor, particularly for minority groups.

Work in Progress

"Using Large Language Models to Aggregate Data from Online Sources”
“Backlash to Racial Integration in Unions and the Cost to Workers”
“Resistance to Public Goods when Associated with a Minority Group”