Kalie Pierce

• P.h.D., Economics, Cornell University, 2026
• M.P.A., Public Affairs, Princeton University, 2018 
• B.A., Government & Asian Studies, Dartmouth College, 2011

• Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 2026-present
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Consortium for Faculty Diversity, Colgate University, 2025-2026
• Research Assistant, Alex Mas, Princeton University, 2018-2019
• Summer Associate, Federal Reserve, 2017
• Research Assistant, Nathan Fiala, Innovations for Poverty Action, 2014-2015
  
   

Polarization in School Board Elections and Impact on District Enrollment

School board elections in the United States have become increasingly polarized. A growing number of candidates campaign in support of “parental rights,” a controversial agenda centered on issues of race, gender, and sexuality. Although a large literature documents the effects of polarization on voting and civic engagement, less is known about whether partisan identification affects costly, seemingly non-political decisions. This paper examines whether the election of a polarizing school board candidate will drive families out of the schools governed by a school board - traditional public schools. I construct a novel dataset identifying all 2022 school board candidates in California and their stances on parental rights using online sources and an artificial intelligence (AI) -powered large language model (LLM). Employing a regression discontinuity design, I estimate the causal impact of electing a parental rights candidate on subsequent district enrollment of traditional public schools. I do not find evidence of a causal effect on overall enrollment. However, responses vary depending on the type of locale. In urban districts, a parental rights victory decreases traditional public school enrollment by approximately 7.3%, or approximately 400 students, and increases public charter school enrollment by a similar magnitude. I also find that Black student enrollment declines in higher-income Black communities after the election of a parental rights supporter. This paper provides the first causal evidence that school board election outcomes can shape household schooling choices depending on locality and socioeconomic makeup of a district. 

• "Using Large Language Models to Aggregate Data from Online Sources”
• “Backlash to Racial Integration in Unions and the Cost to Workers”
• “Resistance to Public Goods when Associated with a Minority Group”