Christine H. Roch

Networks to Nowhere: Segregation and Stratification in Networks of Information about Schools

Theory: Public sector reforms expanding citizen choice are hypothesized to create many of the benefits of private markets, in part by increasing the incentives of citizens to search for information about the quality of public services. Social scientists have shown that networks can provide valuable shortcuts to the information necessary to participate in this expanded market for public goods. Critics of public sector markets argue, however, that choice will heighten existing inequalities, increasing stratification by education and income and racial segregation. This criticism is particularly evident in debates about school choice. Hypothesis: The quality of networks in school districts with choice is hypothesized to be higher than in school districts without choice and to increase with parental education levels. Networks are also hypothesized to be segregated by race. In addition, differences in networks as a function of education and the segregation of networks by race may be greater in choice districts than in districts with no or little choice. Methods: Two stage generalized least square techniques are used to predict the quality of discussants and racial patterns in education networks while controlling for the problem of nonrandom assignment inherent in different levels of parental involvement in school choice. Results: Higher socioeconomic status individuals are more likely to have higher quality education networks. Education networks also exhibit a high degree of racial segregation. Institutional incentives do not markedly affect the nature of information networks about education-but where effects are found, they tend to indicate higher levels of class stratification and racial segregation.

Citizens, Accountability, and Service Satisfaction The Influence of Expectations

Understanding how citizen-consumers form evaluations of public services is critical to understanding account ability in democratic governance. The task of using citizens’ assessments of service quality as an accountability mechanism, however, may be more complex than is commonly understood. In particular, little research has examined how citizens’ expectations about the quality of services may influence their levels of satisfaction with public services. In this article, we examine empirically the relationship between perceived performance, expectations, and satisfaction. We examine these relationships across three service areas: trash, police, and schools, relying on survey data from a statewide survey of Georgia residents. Our results suggest higher subjective assessments of service quality are positively related to satisfaction. They also suggest, however, that an “A” service is not always associated with the same level of satisfaction; holding citizens’ assessments of service quality constant, positive disconfirmation of expectations increases citizen-consumers’ levels of satisfaction with services.

Representative Bureaucracy and Policy Tools: Ethnicity, Student Discipline, and Representation in Public Schools

This article examines how racial and ethnic representation influences the tools that public officials use in designing policy. We use Schneider and Ingram’s policy tools framework to empirically test how racial and ethnic representation affects student discipline outcomes in a sample of Georgia public schools. We find that schools with balanced racial and ethnic representation are more likely to adopt learning-oriented discipline policies, whereas those with imbalanced representation are more likely to implement sanction-oriented policies. The results demonstrate that representation is an important lever in policy design, with broad social and political consequences that extend beyond the immediate organization.

Heuristics, Low Information Rationality, and Choosing Public Goods Broken Windows as Shortcuts to Information about School Performance

The United States is in the midst of a reform movement empowering parents to choose among an expanded set of schools for their children. Inherent in these reforms is the idea that parents will gather the information necessary to make informed choices from among the set. Opponents of school choice argue that lower-income parents will not be able to gather information about their options to select appropriate schools for their children. The authors show that visual cues can indicate levels of academic performance and school safety—the two dimensions of schools that concern parents—and may allow parents to make good choices among schools.

Differing Effects of Representative Bureaucracy in Charter Schools and Traditional Public Schools

The authors examine the influence of teacher and administrator representation by race and ethnicity on disciplinary tools and standardized test scores within traditional public elementary schools and charter schools. The authors argue that school officials within charter schools will be less likely to consider race and ethnicity when making schooling decisions because of their attention to the culture and norms within charter schools. As a result, the authors expect that the translation from passive to active representation will be more difficult in charter schools than in traditional elementary schools. Using data from Georgia, the authors analyze this question empirically and find a statistically significant influence of representation among teachers on disciplinary tools and test scores and a more limited influence of administrative representation on standardized tests. Findings also support the central research question of this study, that is, whether the effects of racial and ethnic representation appear more limited among charter schools than traditional public schools.

Charter Schools, Equity, and Student Enrollments The Role of For-profit Educational Management Organizations

For-profit educational management organizations (EMOs) are a growing phenomenon in public education, and they are an integral part of charter school reform in many states. Research suggests that charter schools operated by for-profit entities may take a more entrepreneurial approach when expanding their operations and thus may be more inclined to serve less disadvantaged and less costly students. In this article, we examine empirically whether charter schools are less likely to serve disadvantaged students by comparing the distribution of students across traditional public schools, nonprofit charter schools, and those managed by private companies. We base our analysis on data from the National Center of Education Statistics’ (NCES) Common Core Data (CCD), and we combine this data with information on the types of management organizations operating charter schools. Our results suggest that charter schools managed by EMOs draw students differently to their schools than those charter schools not managed by EMOs. They seem to seek out more Black students but are also focused on selecting fewer poor students than we see among regular public schools. When examining differences in the size of EMOs, we find that these effects appear most likely to occur among schools operated by large-sized EMOs.

State Policy Innovation in Perspective Courts, Legislatures, and Education Finance Reform

Why and when courts will change policy has been the subject of significant scholarly attention, but there has been little effort to integrate this research within the existing research of determinants of state legislative policy change. In this article, the authors incorporate both of these research areas to answer the question of whether policy change will occur through the legislature or through the courts, examining the important issue of education finance reform. To understand and predict this change, the authors characterize the state policy environment as consisting of political, legal, and strategic factors. The authors find that a combination of political and strategic factors influences legislatures and the courts, but that law matters greatly to the courts, particularly state constitutional education clauses. The authors also find that institutional structure influences the degree to which politics matters to the courts.

Social Context and Voting Over Taxes: Evidence from a Referendum in Alabama

The authors investigate the impact of racial diversity and segregation on white voter support for a comprehensive, progressive tax reform, focusing on a 2003 referendum held in Alabama, which if approved would have raised substantial additional revenues for public education and at the same time greatly increased the progressivity of the tax system. The authors use Kings method of ecological inference to obtain estimates of white and black support for the referendum proposal and then attempt to explain the variance across counties in white voter support. Findings show that the degree of racial segregation, rather than the proportion of blacks in a given county, is most critical in predicting support for the referendum among whites at the county level.

Representative Bureaucracy and School Discipline The Influence of Schools’ Racial Contexts

This article examines whether the racial context within local communities influences the assignment of disciplinary policies in public schools. First, we consider whether different policies may be assigned to similar target groups across varying racial contexts. Then, we consider whether the racial context moderates the transition from passive representation to active representation among bureaucrats. We draw from two theories of intergroup relations—group contact theory and group threat theory—to help explain the passive-to-active representation link. Using a sample of Georgia public schools, we find that schools rely more on more punitive disciplinary measures in school districts characterized by greater segregation and that this occurs especially among schools with sizable African American student populations. We also find that active representation appears to occur more often in segregated environments, perhaps because of the greater salience of race within these communities.

Strengthening Public Administration Research: Identifying Boundaries and Horizons

Since the early days of the field, public administration research has been a work in progress. Many authors have struggled to find the proper role of research in the field. Interest in the topic intensified over the last couple of decades, as a perception developed that the quality and usefulness of work had fallen decidedly behind other academic disciplines. While a rich literature has developed debating the merits of public administration research, the resulting product does not provide a clear direction for reform-minded researchers to follow. In this article, we seek to organize this material in ways that will make it more useful. Our analysis identifies hard and soft barriers preventing progress and examines three dilemmas facing public administration researchers: theoretical versus conceptual research, academically sophisticated methods versus widely accessible methods, and an academic versus a practitioner focus. Through our discussion of these dilemmas, we seek to clarify the issues facing researchers and help them make more informed choices.