Marketing Toward the Desegregation of Schools

Parents want the best possible education for their children and the ability to choose their schools. However, prior research shows that as the ability to choose schools increases, so does school racial segregation. Segregation reduces educational, economic, and health outcomes for all students. Because of these negative outcomes, US policymakers seek to increase integration, often inadvertently reducing a parent's ability to choose. This research proposes that education marketing interventions can increase integration rates while maintaining a parent's ability to choose. We propose that information that counters parents' prior beliefs about a racially-different school (i.e., a school whose majority race differs from the child's) can increase a parent's likelihood of choosing the school. This research uses machine learning methods and a series of experiments to identify parents' baseline beliefs and motivations for selecting or avoiding racially-different schools. We then test marketing interventions for efficacy in influencing over 2,400 parents' choice of a racially-different school. We find that providing information that counters prior beliefs is up to 33 times more effective in motivating a White parent's choice of a primarily-Black school than a Black parent's choice of a primarily-White school. School administrators and policymakers may benefit from using these marketing approaches.