No Spending Without Representation : School Boards and the Racial Gap in Education Finance

This paper provides causal evidence that greater minority representation on school boards translates into greater investment in minority students. Focusing on California school boards, I obtain causal effects by instrumenting for minority (specifically, Hispanic) school board representation using the random order in which candidates appear on election ballots. Given the dearth of school-level expenditure data, I introduce detailed records from California's School Facility Program (SFP), a capital investment program for which I observe how school boards allocate the marginal dollar within-district. Instrumental variables estimates show that an additional Hispanic school board member increases SFP-funded investments at high-Hispanic schools within the district by 66 percent, with substantially lower effects at low-Hispanic schools. High-Hispanic schools also exhibit gains in student achievement of 0.08 standard deviations. I attribute this improved performance to increased investment alongside decreased teacher churn: new hiring at high-Hispanic schools decreases by 16 percent. These results provide the first causal evidence that school board politics---and, specifically, school board ethnic composition---shapes education finance policy at the local level. I conclude that enhancing minority representation on school boards could help combat racial disparities in education