Research

Job Market Paper

Polarization in School Board Elections and Impact on District Enrollment

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. This paper examines whether the election of a polarizing school board candidate will drive families out of the schools governed by a school board - traditional public schools. 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 of traditional public schools. I do not find evidence of a causal effect on overall enrollment. However, responses vary depending on the type of locale. In urban districts, a parental rights victory decreases traditional public school enrollment by approximately 7.3%, or approximately 400 students, and increases public charter school enrollment by a similar magnitude. I also find that Black student enrollment declines in higher-income Black communities after the election of a parental rights supporter. This paper provides the first causal evidence that school board election outcomes can shape household schooling choices depending on locality and socioeconomic makeup of a district.

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”