A common critique of school choice is that it will have the practical effect of further increasing racial and ethnic segregation in American education. Although most survey evidence indicates that the highest priority of parents in choosing schools is academic quality, with the race and ethnic composition of the student body being much less important, many critics doubt that private preferences are being publicly revealed. In this paper, we use an experimental design embedded in a survey to obtain an alternative measure of educational quality and racial diversity as considerations for household school choice. While both academic quality and race/ethnic diversity had an effect on preferences, academic quality was a more important predictor. We then examined the relationship between preference and actual choice outcomes. Race-related opinions were nonpredictive of outcomes, but a stress on high test scores by parents predicted school choice among students who are not “at risk.”

Research on the public approval of American governors has focused almost exclusively on the impact of economic conditions on fluctuations in such approval. This article adds events variables to a model of gubernatorial public approval including the more commonly used economic variables, and tests this model in a time-series analysis in three states. The results suggest that the effect of political events is minimal and mixed. Furthermore, the analysis does not clearly support any general theory of gubernatorial approval. Instead, the factors that influence public support for governors seem to vary across time and state.

Using a sample of 628 white, black, and Hispanic voters in a large urban school district, we test a series of hypotheses about voting in a school bond election. We find that there is a core of similar results across racial/ethnic groups. All three groups show strong, directly measured, self-interest effects. We also find some distinct group differences. Symbolic values played a limited role for white voters, but a stronger role for minorities. In addition, for white voters we find a substantial drop in support for the bond across age cohorts, but no such drop among black and Hispanic voters.

Previous research indicates that the academic performance of minority students improves when school faculties include minority teachers. This research addresses this issue using data from some 540 school districts and 668 campuses in Texas. It finds that the greater the shortfall between the district/campus percentage of minority teachers and the district/campus percentage of minority students, the lower the percentage of district/campus minority students passing the state achievement test. When controls are entered for the rate of increase in minority student percentage, this association disappears for Hispanic students but not for African-American students.