Socioeconomic Status, Race, and Public Support for School Integration

Abstract

Polling data routinely indicate broad support for the concept of diverse schools, but integration initiatives—both racial and socioeconomic—regularly encounter significant opposition. We leverage a nationally representative survey experiment to provide novel evidence on public support for integration initiatives. Specifically, we present respondents with a hypothetical referendum where we provide information on two policy options for assigning students to schools: (1) a residence-based assignment option and (2) an option designed to achieve stated racial/ethnic or socioeconomic diversity targets, with respondents randomly assigned to the racial/ethnic or socioeconomic diversity option. After calculating public support and average willingness-to-pay, our results demonstrate a clear plurality of the public preferring residence-based assignment to the racial diversity initiative, but a near-even split in support for residence-based assignment and the socioeconomic integration initiative. Moreover, we find that the decline in support for race-based integration, relative to the socioeconomic diversity initiative, is entirely attributable to White and Republican respondents.