Choosing Schools, Choosing Safety: How Multiple Dimensions of Safety Shape School Choices

Publicly available data and analysis files for Choosing Schools, Choosing Safety Project. <br><br>School choice programs have grown substantially over the past thirty years, enabling families to make school selections unbounded by their residential locations. While studies document families’ stated preferences for school safety, few quantitatively and comprehensively examine which safety components associate with families’ actual school choices. Leveraging NYC high school applications, I find that families factor multiple dimensions of safety into their school choices. Independent of schools’ academic, demographic, and geographic characteristics, families screen out schools with higher neighborhood and school violence and disorder; and metal detectors in the initial elimination phase of their decisions, and prefer schools in lower violence neighborhoods in the subsequent, more detailed decision-making phase. Families’ choices suggest variation in safety priorities by race and academic background. White, Asian, and higher-achieving students prioritize protection from neighborhood and school violence; Latine and Black students particularly prioritize lower school disorder; and White students ranked schools with metal detectors lower.

本数据集包含「择校与安全（Choosing Schools, Choosing Safety）」项目的公开可用数据与分析文件。
过去三十年间，学校择校项目规模显著扩张，使得家庭无需受居住地域限制，即可自主选择就读学校。尽管既有研究已记录了家庭对校园安全的主观偏好，但鲜有研究从定量视角全面探讨哪些安全维度会影响家庭的实际择校决策。本研究依托纽约市（NYC）高中申请数据，发现家庭在择校时会将多维度的安全因素纳入考量：在排除学校学术、人口结构与地域特征的干扰后，家庭会在决策的初始筛选阶段，规避周边与校内暴力及治安乱象更为严重的学校，以及配备金属探测仪的学校；而在后续更为细致的决策阶段，则更青睐周边暴力事件发生率更低的学校。家庭的择校选择还体现出，其安全优先级因种族与学业背景存在显著差异：白人、亚裔及学业表现更优异的学生，优先考量规避周边与校内暴力；拉丁裔与黑人学生则更侧重降低校内治安乱象；而白人学生对配备金属探测仪的学校评价更低。