The Power of Policy Defaults: A Behavioral Economics View of Public School Assignment Policies & Educational Equity
Abstract
The school assignment process plays a central role in shaping a student’s educational
experience, which subsequently influences his or her future opportunities. Thus, school
assignment policies have an impact on social equity. Over the past seventy years,
public school district assignment policies have undergone significant change as a
result of evolving national attitudes towards segregation, legal changes stemming
from Supreme Court rulings, and the growing popularity of parental choice. Though
school assignment policies are constantly evolving, some consideration of area of
residence has always played a role in the process. Given the equity implications of
school assignments, it is important to recognize that the design of an assignment
policy plays a critical role in determining the pattern of outcomes generated. My
goal in this thesis is to examine the structure of school assignment policies using
the lens of behavioral economics. Behavioral economics highlights the importance of
the system designated outcome, commonly known as the “default” option, in complex
decision making environments. Specifically, I examine the type of default school assignment
during three distinct assignment policy years within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School
District. I hypothesize that as the default school assignment becomes more dependent
on residential proximity, that is, the neighborhood school 1) the demographic similarities
between schools and their surrounding neighborhoods will increase at the district-level
with 2) the greatest increases in the most segregated neighborhoods, and 3) that levels
of racial imbalance across district schools and racial isolation within schools will
increase. A test of these hypotheses using school-level racial data from the second
largest school district in North Carolina, Charlotte-Mecklenburg , strongly supports
my theoretical predictions.
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Master's thesisPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/5737Citation
Mahesh, Pavithra (2012). The Power of Policy Defaults: A Behavioral Economics View of Public School Assignment
Policies & Educational Equity. Master's thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/5737.Collections
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