Disentangling the Threat: Experimental Evidence on White Parents’ Racialized Perceptions of Multiple Dimensions of School Safety

Parents cite concerns about safety when making school-choice decisions; however, conceptions of school safety are both ambiguous and racialized. This research provides experimental evidence on the effect of school racial composition on parents’ perceptions of multiple dimensions of safety: socioemotional, violence, biological, and school order. Using a survey experiment in which respondents examine hypothetical school profiles with randomly varied school characteristics such as demographics and school quality, the authors find that White parents overall, across income and political spectra, and with differing endorsements of racial stereotypes, rate schools with predominantly Black, Latine, and Asian populations as socioemotionally unsafe, predominantly Black and Latine schools as violent and disorderly, and predominantly Black schools as biologically hazardous. The results illuminate how these racialized perceptions of multiple dimensions of school safety reinforce stigmatizing narratives of racialized schools that serve to exacerbate school segregation and the uneven distribution of educational resources across schools.