Abstract

School discipline and spending data have recently become publicly available, but research lags behind on how parents navigate this information and whether it affects school choice. In 2012, public schools were mandated to report expulsions and suspensions through the Civil Rights Data Collection. Researchers believe that persistent Black-White discipline disparities could reflect differential selection, wherein Black students are singled out despite similar behavior. However, we do not know how parents react to school discipline disparities and weigh them against other school characteristics. Parents are also gaining access to school-level spending data, which the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act requires states to report. This pilot study randomly assigns three conditions in a survey experiment about parents’ school preferences and search process: Black-White discipline disparities, school safety spending, and school racial demographics.

Principal Investigators