Having free choice in where to go to school may, counterintuitively, drive segregation instead of reducing it, according to the findings from a new study.
Dr. Kalinda Ukanwa
The study, “School choice increases racial segregation even when parents do not care about race,” was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Dr. Kalinda Ukanwa, an assistant professor of marketing at University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, served as the study's lead author. Dr. Aziza C. Jones, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, and Dr. Broderick L. Turner Jr., an assistant professor of marketing at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business were co-authors.
The researchers gave approximately 1,600 Black and white parents the unmitigated choice of varying fictional schools to find preferences for factors such as a school performance rating, teacher experience, income, racial demographics, and commute time.
Ukanwa defines unmitigated school choice in this context as any parent being able to select any school, anywhere in the area.
The parents rated the school attributes in terms of importance. And although both groups valued teacher experience, Black parents were more willing to forgo other attributes for higher-rated schools, whereas white parents valued short commutes more, the study found.
“These preference differences stem from motivational differences in pursuit of social status,” the authors of the study wrote. “Given that the de facto US racial hierarchy assigns Black people to a lower social status, Black parents are more motivated to seek schools that signal that they can improve their children’s status.”
