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Unmasking racial avoidance: Experimental evidence on parental school choice and public health policies during the Covid-19 pandemic
BACKGROUND: COVID-19 drastically changed the school choice landscape as families considered schools with varying public health protocols as well as academic and demographic characteristics. Our understanding of families’ preferences during the pandemic is limited, however, because it primarily deriv...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier Ltd.
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10108560/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37163785 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115915 |
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author | Hailey, Chantal A. Murray, Brittany Boggs, Rachel Broussard, Jalisa Flores, Milani |
author_facet | Hailey, Chantal A. Murray, Brittany Boggs, Rachel Broussard, Jalisa Flores, Milani |
author_sort | Hailey, Chantal A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: COVID-19 drastically changed the school choice landscape as families considered schools with varying public health protocols as well as academic and demographic characteristics. Our understanding of families’ preferences during the pandemic is limited, however, because it primarily derives from surveys asking parents about a single school characteristic. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to understand how families' preferences for schools’ racial composition and public health policies may interdepend. METHODS: We conducted an original school choice survey experiment with U.S. White parents in August 2021. Parents indicated their willingness to enroll their student in hypothetical schools with experimentally randomized school quality ratings, racial and socioeconomic demographics, and COVID mitigation strategies (i.e. instructional modalities, mask and vaccination mandates). RESULTS: We find novel causal evidence that White parents' preferences for schools’ racial demographics and public health policies are interdependent. Among otherwise similar schools, parents expressed stronger preferences to avoid Black, Latinx, and Asian schools when there were fewer COVID mitigation policies. Relatedly, parents required more stringent COVID protocols for their children to attend predominantly Black, Latinx, and Asian schools while showing no preferences for COVID policies among predominantly White schools. The interdependence of preferred racial demographics and public health polices was amplified among White parents who held stigmatizing beliefs about Asian populations carrying the COVID virus and pro-White sentiments. Although Democrats expressed stronger preferences for schools with more COVID mitigation strategies than Republicans, for White parents across the political spectrum school racial composition and COVID mitigation preferences interdepended. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests families may leverage flexible student assignment policies and schools of choice to enroll in or avoid schools based on both preferred public health policies and racial demographics. Districts should consider how adopting strong public health policies during infectious disease outbreaks may help mitigate hardened racial avoidance and school racial segregation. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10108560 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Elsevier Ltd. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-101085602023-04-18 Unmasking racial avoidance: Experimental evidence on parental school choice and public health policies during the Covid-19 pandemic Hailey, Chantal A. Murray, Brittany Boggs, Rachel Broussard, Jalisa Flores, Milani Soc Sci Med Article BACKGROUND: COVID-19 drastically changed the school choice landscape as families considered schools with varying public health protocols as well as academic and demographic characteristics. Our understanding of families’ preferences during the pandemic is limited, however, because it primarily derives from surveys asking parents about a single school characteristic. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to understand how families' preferences for schools’ racial composition and public health policies may interdepend. METHODS: We conducted an original school choice survey experiment with U.S. White parents in August 2021. Parents indicated their willingness to enroll their student in hypothetical schools with experimentally randomized school quality ratings, racial and socioeconomic demographics, and COVID mitigation strategies (i.e. instructional modalities, mask and vaccination mandates). RESULTS: We find novel causal evidence that White parents' preferences for schools’ racial demographics and public health policies are interdependent. Among otherwise similar schools, parents expressed stronger preferences to avoid Black, Latinx, and Asian schools when there were fewer COVID mitigation policies. Relatedly, parents required more stringent COVID protocols for their children to attend predominantly Black, Latinx, and Asian schools while showing no preferences for COVID policies among predominantly White schools. The interdependence of preferred racial demographics and public health polices was amplified among White parents who held stigmatizing beliefs about Asian populations carrying the COVID virus and pro-White sentiments. Although Democrats expressed stronger preferences for schools with more COVID mitigation strategies than Republicans, for White parents across the political spectrum school racial composition and COVID mitigation preferences interdepended. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests families may leverage flexible student assignment policies and schools of choice to enroll in or avoid schools based on both preferred public health policies and racial demographics. Districts should consider how adopting strong public health policies during infectious disease outbreaks may help mitigate hardened racial avoidance and school racial segregation. Elsevier Ltd. 2023-06 2023-04-17 /pmc/articles/PMC10108560/ /pubmed/37163785 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115915 Text en © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Hailey, Chantal A. Murray, Brittany Boggs, Rachel Broussard, Jalisa Flores, Milani Unmasking racial avoidance: Experimental evidence on parental school choice and public health policies during the Covid-19 pandemic |
title | Unmasking racial avoidance: Experimental evidence on parental school choice and public health policies during the Covid-19 pandemic |
title_full | Unmasking racial avoidance: Experimental evidence on parental school choice and public health policies during the Covid-19 pandemic |
title_fullStr | Unmasking racial avoidance: Experimental evidence on parental school choice and public health policies during the Covid-19 pandemic |
title_full_unstemmed | Unmasking racial avoidance: Experimental evidence on parental school choice and public health policies during the Covid-19 pandemic |
title_short | Unmasking racial avoidance: Experimental evidence on parental school choice and public health policies during the Covid-19 pandemic |
title_sort | unmasking racial avoidance: experimental evidence on parental school choice and public health policies during the covid-19 pandemic |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10108560/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37163785 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115915 |
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