Symbolic Representation in American Schools: Race, Gender, and Intersectionality

In any governmental system public trust and confidence in political institutions is central to ensuring that citizens obey laws and participate in the political process. If enough citizens lack confidence or trust in institutions, the legitimacy of governmental institutions and the social order may be threatened. In the United States public opinion polls consistently demonstrate that African Americans hold more negative views of political institutions than whites. Research suggests that increasing descriptive or passive representation may help to improve the racial disparity that exists between white and African American attitudes toward governmental institutions in a process referred to as symbolic representation (Kingsley, 1944; Mansbridge, 1999). Researchers from different disciplines use either the word “descriptive” or “passive” representation to refer to the extent to which public officials and employees share the demographic characteristics of the population or clients served. We use descriptive representation for the sake of consistency.

Existing research suggests that increasing descriptive representation based on race can affect how clients of a bureaucracy feel about the organization providing them services (Keiser et al., 2021; Marschall & Ruhil, 2007; Riccucci et al., 2018; Roch et al., 2018; Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009). However, although well recognized by scholars (Bishu & Kennedy, 2020; Garcia & Zajicek, 2021; Keiser, 2010), few empirical studies exist of symbolic representation that consider intersectionality, e.g. the consideration of how social identities such as race, gender, class, etc. combine to affect the attitudes of target population toward public institutions. Empirical evidence exists that intersectionality affects the relationship between descriptive representation and policy implementation and outcomes (Baumgartner et al., 2020; Fay et al., 2021; Wright, 2022), yet few studies examine how intersectionality affects attitudes.

Our research explores how race intersects with gender on attitudes toward public schools and examines whether having more descriptively representative organizations helps to reduce the negative effects of race on attitudes toward political institutions. We focus on young adults’ attitudes about their schools. Public schools are some of the first public institutions within which people experience government (Bruch & Soss, 2018). Education is considered a linchpin of democracy in helping produce better citizens and stronger democracy (Mayne & Hakhverdian, 2017). Political trust in public institutions plays an important role in maintaining democracy (Levi & Stoker, 2000). Whether citizens are politically trusting depends on the performance of political actors and institutions (Keele, 2005). Therefore, it is important to understand how representative bureaucracy affects the attitudes of young adults toward their schools and gain experience in public institutions. To increase our understanding of how representative bureaucracy affects attitudes of young adults toward public institutions, we analyze survey data from 44 different schools in an Ohio county about the fairness of school discipline and overall attitudes about the respondent’s school. This analysis has implications for whether increasing the representation of teachers on the basis of race and gender will improve how young adults view the first public institutions in which they interact with, e.g. their individual school, as well as how relationships will vary by both race and gender representation. Making use of data from surveys of students, administrators, and teachers, we examine the relationship between descriptive representation and general satisfaction with a respondent’s school, and their perception about the fairness of school discipline.

Race, Gender and Attitudes toward American Institutions

Race clearly shapes attitudes toward American political institutions (Almond & Verba, 1963; Hero, 2007). African Americans are consistently and strongly less positive about the criminal justice system than whites (Engel, 2005; Hurwitz & Peffley, 2005; Marschall & Shah, 2007) and, to a lesser extent, more negative about political institutions, such as Congress, the presidency, and the federal government as a whole (Brewer & Sigelman, 2002; Howell & Fagan, 1988; Kinder & Sanders, 1996; Sigelman & Welch, 1991). Negative attitudes toward political institutions have significant implications for whether citizens believe that interactions with government officials are fair (Hurwitz & Peffley, 2005) and whether citizens comply with government authority (Gibson et al., 2003; Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 2001; Skolnick, 1966; Skolnick & Fyfe, 1993; Tyler, 1998, 2001).

Understanding the effects of race on attitudes towards schools is an important question for both scholars interested in the bureaucracy and for those interested in understanding public opinion toward political institutions. Public support is an important source of political power for schools, like all public bureaucratic organizations, because it influences resources, discretion, and autonomy (Meier, 1993a). Furthermore, in order to successfully implement policy, the bureaucracy requires the cooperation of the target population and the public in general (Mazmanian & Sabatier, 1989).

Although distrust or negative attitudes toward any institution can be problematic for a democracy, Levi and Stoker (2000) argue that distrust or other negative attitudes are most problematic when the institution is one that citizens interact with on a daily basis because those attitudes are what drive citizen’s political behavior. Schools are particularly important institutions; they are the most common public organization in most countries and are one of the central institutions of a democratic society (Meier & O’Toole, 2006; Romer et al., 2007). Both public and private schools play a role in socializing people into the norms of a democratic society and in legitimizing political institutions (Almond & Verba, 1963; Easton & Dennis, 1969; Langton & Jennings, 1968; Niemi & Junn, 1998).

African-American distrust of government is attributed to the historical marginalization of Blacks in every segment of American society, including schools (Hero, 2007; Hochschild, 1995; Kinder & Winter, 2001; Marschall & Shah, 2007; Sigelman & Welch, 1991). And since it is in the public schools that students are socialized to civil society and gain their orientations towards government (Almond & Verba, 1963; Easton & Dennis, 1969), student attitudes towards government institutions and whether actions by authorities are fair are based in part, on how school officials exercise authority (Langton & Jennings, 1968; Niemi & Junn, 1998). Therefore, African-Americans’ distrust of government may stem, in part, from how they perceive the education system (Hero, 2007).

However, race is not the only identity that is important for shaping attitudes towards government institutions. Women and men may have differing experiences with American government institutions because historically women have been less descriptively represented in Congress, the Presidency and the upper echelons of the federal government than men (Dolan, 2001). This may make women more likely to be distrustful of the government. The empirical evidence about the impact of gender on attitudes toward government institutions is mixed. Some studies find no evidence that gender differences exist in feelings of trust toward government (Rahn & Rudolph, 2005), other studies find that women are more trusting or have more positive attitudes toward some types of institutions but not all (Cook & Gronke, 2005; Kelleher & Wolak, 2007; Paulsen & Bartkowski, 1997), and some studies find that women are less likely to feel institutions such as the criminal justice system are fair (Overby et al., 2005).

The effect of race and gender on attitudes toward government institutions is complicated by the fact that people do not hold one identity. Instead people have multiple identities, such as race and gender, with each becoming salient at different times (Fay et al., 2021; Keiser et al., 2002; Philpot & Walton, 2007; Transue, 2007). Race and gender might intersect to create patterns in feelings of political trust; and we, therefore, need to explore differences among African-American men and women as well as men and women with other racial/ethnic characteristics. Black men and Black women have different experiences even though both share the experience of being Black (Gay & Tate, 1998; Philpot & Walton, 2007). Black men, for example, are much more likely to be imprisoned than Black women and are more likely to be disenfranchised from political participation (Brown-Dean, 2007; Hero, 2007). Black women are more likely to experience discrimination based both on race and on sex (Gay & Tate, 1998; Mansbridge & Tate, 1992).

Existing research is mixed on whether gender differences exist in attitudes towards institutions between people with the same racial/ethnic characteristics. Marschall and Shah (2007) find for example, that white men are less trusting than white women, but that gender does not explain differences in feelings of political trust for African Americans. In contrast, Brunell, Anderson, and Cremona (2008) find that among African Americans, men are less likely to approve of Congress as a whole than are women. Baniamin and Jamil (2021) find that observers perceive a government committee as fairer and more effective as the number of female committee members increases, even when women are overrepresented. More research is needed before we can understand how the intersection of race and gender influence attitudes toward government institutions. We therefore explore differences in attitudes toward schools for both race and gender. To assess the role of schools in shaping attitudes we must focus our attention on the perceptions and attitudes of students rather than adults. We model two dimensions of attitudes toward school. First, to capture the general outlook of students, we focus on how satisfied students are with the school they attend. Second, we model student attitudes about school discipline, focusing on whether students believe punishment is fair or appropriate. Equity or fairness is one of the central values with which the public evaluates public policy (Stone, 1997; Tyler, 1984, 1990, 2001) and, therefore, should play a role in determining the legitimacy of public institutions.

Few studies have focused on how both race and gender intersect to affect attitudes toward the fairness of decisions of school administrators although several studies examine differences based on race and ethnicity in education and other settings (Keiser et al., 2021; Roch et al., 2018). Additional studies also explore how the intersection of race and gender influence perceptions of bureaucracy or influence the performance of bureaucrats (Baniamin & Jamil, 2021; Baumgartner et al., 2020; Riccucci et al., 2018; Wright, 2022). Both race and gender are salient identities in the administration of public education.

Minorities do not fare as well as non-minorities across a variety of measures such as performance on standardized test scores, dropout rates, assignment to gifted courses, and school discipline (Hero, 2007; Meier et al., 1989; Rocha & Hawes, 2009). The performance gap in education between African Americans and other ethnic groups has a long history and has garnered much academic attention (Ainsworth-Darnell & Downey, 1998; Hero, 2007). Like race, issues related to gender have had an impact on education, although the impact is different from the pattern found for race. Although for race, minorities consistently have more negative experiences in education than non-minorities, the role of student gender varies across different types of outcomes.

Historically girls’ have lagged boys’ performance in math and science (Keiser et al., 2002) but boys are disadvantaged compared to girls in performance on standardized reading and writing tests, are more likely to skip school, and more likely to be assigned to special education classes (Tyre, 2006). Even more important for our purposes, boys face school discipline disproportionately. Furthermore, school officials discipline boys more than girls even though the numbers of boys and girls in schools is fairly even (Glackman et al., 1978; Office of Civil Rights, 1984; Shaw & Braden, 1990; Skiba et al., 2002). In 2006, Newsweek magazine went so far as to label the disparity in performance between boys and girls a crisis with the headline “The Boy Crisis: At Every Level of Education, They’re Falling Behind. What to Do?” We not only examine, therefore, the impact of race on attitudes toward school but explore distinctions between White boys, Black boys, White girls and Black girls predicting that the relative importance of race and gender will be driven by the relative saliency of race and gender for different aspects of education.

The patterns in educational outcomes for race and gender lead us to expect that girls will be more likely to think that punishment is appropriate than are boys. Black boys should hold the most negative attitudes toward schools and white girls will have the most positive attitudes toward school. The relative saliency of race versus gender determines the placement of Black girls and White boys on the scale. The large discipline gap between girls and boys would lead us to expect that gender is most salient so White boys will be more negative about discipline than Black girls, but theory is relatively silent about general attitudes toward dissatisfaction because girls perform better on some types of performance but worse on others.^[1]

Representative Bureaucracy

The theory of representative bureaucracy posits that a racial, ethnic, and gender descriptively representative bureaucracy is good for democracy because bureaucrats will share policy values with people with whom they share demographic characteristics and implement policy consistent with these values (Baumgartner et al., 2020; Meier, 1993b; Mosher, 1968; Wright, 2022). These representative policy outputs may occur because of partiality or advocacy on the part of bureaucrats (active representation) or through a more passive process of influencing the attitudes and behaviors of non-minority bureaucrats (Lim, 2006; Rocha & Hawes, 2009). Empirical research provides evidence supporting the contention that descriptive representation influences policy outputs (see for example, Bali and Alvarez’s 2003; Hindera, 1993; Oates, 2003; Rocha & Hawes, 2009; Selden, 1997; Wilkins & Keiser, 2006; Wright, 2022). Specific to education, scholars have found improvement in student performance measured in a variety of ways when their school is more descriptively representative (Keiser et al., 2002; Meier et al., 1989) and when teachers and students have the same demographic characteristics (Dee, 2005).

However, increased descriptive representation might have benefits beyond policy outputs and may influence the attitudes and actions of minority and non-minority clients (Keiser et al., 2021; Lim, 2006; Meier, 2019; Meier & Nicholson-Crotty, 2006; Riccucci et al., 2018; Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009). A descriptively representative bureaucracy can be desirable because it may alter the attitudes and the behavior of target populations (Hawes, 2021; Keiser et al., 2021; Meier & Nicholson-Crotty, 2006; Xu & Meier, 2021). This process is referred to as symbolic representation. Research on elected officials has shown that descriptive representation can influence the attitudes of minority and non-minority constituents (Baniamin & Jamil, 2021; Bobo & Gilliam, 1990; Gay, 2001, 2002; Gilliam, 1996; Marschall & Ruhil, 2007; Marschall & Shah, 2007). Similarly, researchers in public administration have found evidence that descriptive representation increases the likelihood that clients will have more positive attitudes toward the bureaucracy (Keiser et al., 2021; Riccucci et al., 2014, 2018; Roch et al., 2018; Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009).

With symbolic representation, how people feel about public organizations depends on whether the people who work in those organizations “look like them.” When people see themselves reflected among public employees, they are more likely to have higher trust because they assume people within the organization have similar life experience, share their values, and are more likely to understand their situations (Keiser et al., 2002; Mansbridge, 1999; Meier, 2019; Meier & Nicholson-Crotty, 2006; Riccucci et al., 2014; Scherer & Curry, 2010; Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009). This explains why descriptive representation can lead to improvement in attitudes toward institutions even without changes in policy.

We therefore hypothesize that the impact of race on how students feel about their school varies with the amount of descriptive representation in the bureaucracy. Specifically, we argue that descriptive representation should affect students’ attitudes about school discipline, as well as general attitudes toward their school. Both measures reflect attitudes toward public organizations.

In addition, because increasing the descriptive representation of one group also reduces the descriptive representation of another group holding organizational size constant, increasing descriptive representation may increase positive views of the group becoming more descriptively represented but increase negative views of the group losing representation. Scholars have noted that passive representation might be a zero-sum game because the benefiting of one group disadvantages another group (Lim, 2006; Rocha, 2007) but findings about whether symbolic representation is a zero-sum game in terms of client attitudes is mixed. Two studies of bureaucracies find zero sum effects for symbolic representation. Andrews et al. (2005) find that non-minority clients of English local authorities viewed the bureaucracy as being less effective when the bureaucracy was more descriptively representative of minority groups even when administrative data revealed no differences in effectiveness. Similarly, Theobald and Haider-Markel (2009) find that alleged traffic stop violators’ perceptions of legitimacy about police actions were lower when the race of the police and driver differed; this was true for Whites and Blacks (see Ulbig, 2007 for similar effects for gender representation on city councils).

However, Keiser, Haider-Markel, and Darolia (2021) find a relationship between the representation of Black teachers in a school and improved attitudes toward school discipline policy for both White and Black students and argue that if increased descriptive representation works symbolically to positively influence the attitudes of minority clients, it is also possible that non-minority clients will also undergo a positive shift in attitude through peer effects. This suggests positive attitudes would not be zero-sum. When clients interact together within an organization, the positive attitudes of some clients may spread to others in the organization. In the two studies demonstrating a negative impact of descriptive representation on clientele who are traditionally concerned as part of a majority group (see Andrews et al., 2005; Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009), clients of different races or ethnicities do not necessarily interact together within an organization. Furthermore, even in the absence of peer effects, individuals may perceive public organizations that are not representative of the public, or of particular clients, as being less legitimate or less effective, even when they themselves are represented (Keiser et al., 2021; Riccucci et al., 2018). When looking at gender representation, Baniamin and Jamil (2021) find that even when gender representation on a government committee was increased to a majority of females, the perceptions of males concerning committee performance was still positive. Similarly, Doornkamp, von den Bekerom, and Groeneveld (2019) find that “academic self-concept for math” is enhanced for both girls and boys when the math teacher is a woman.

To explore the impact of representation on client attitudes toward the bureaucracy, we analyze how descriptive representation affects the dissatisfaction of students in junior high and high school and their perception of the fairness of school discipline policy. To test the possibility that increased descriptive representation has a negative impact on non-minority groups, we examine the impact of increasing descriptive representation in schools on feelings of dissatisfaction and fairness on White students as well as Black students.

We do so while also controlling for perceptions of policy implementation. A debate exists in the literature on the impact of descriptive representation of government officials on attitudes of Blacks towards government. Does increasing descriptive representation improve Black attitudes toward institutions because the increase improves the treatment of Blacks by that institution or because simply having greater descriptive representation has effects independent of changes in the institution? Some scholars argue that performance matters the most (Hajnal, 2007; Howell & McLean, 2001; Howell & Perry, 2004) whereas others argue that Black descriptive representation has symbolic effects only (Tate, 2003). Others argue that symbolic effects are enhanced by the policy changes that occur following an increase in descriptive representation (Marschall & Ruhil, 2007).

Intersectionality, Gender, and Representative Bureaucracy

As mentioned earlier, intersectionality is an important aspect of representative bureaucracy, but many existing studies fail to examine how identities such as gender and race intersect to affect symbolic representation. Intersectionality should influence how people respond to descriptive representation of various identities (Bishu & Kennedy, 2020; Garcia & Zajicek, 2021; Wright, 2022). Therefore, we also focus on gender, in addition to race.

Like the descriptive representation of race, the descriptive representation of gender among teaching faculty should have an impact on student attitudes toward school. Most studies of gender representation have focused on the lack of representation among women, since women are traditionally underrepresented in many public institutions. However, in the bureaucracy, especially at the street-level, however, women are much more represented (Dolan, 2001) and in cases like schools, overrepresented among teachers.

The theory of representative bureaucracy leads us to expect that boys will have more positive feelings about their schools when there are more male teachers on the faculty while girls should feel more positive when there are more female teachers. Existing research finds evidence of symbolic representation in education for girls. For example, Xu and Meier (2021) find that gender representation matters in education in China, but it occurs through symbolic representation rather than active representation. Schools then provide an opportunity to explore whether descriptive representation improves the attitudes of males, as well as females, while also exploring the impact of race.

Empirical research on representative bureaucracy has, for the most part, not incorporated how intersectionality affects the impact of descriptive representation on client attitudes. According to Mansbridge and Tate (1992), gender "constructs’’ how men and women of color experience race and race “constructs” how people of color experience “gender.” The multiple identities that public employees hold should affect the kind of impact their identities have on shaping attitudes toward public institutions; one aspect of saliency is whether that identity leads to a disadvantage and or whether changes in policy implementation are beneficial is some way to people who share that identity (Fay et al., 2021; Keiser et al., 2002; Wilkins & Keiser, 2006).

As mentioned earlier, the salience of gender in the United States’ context for girls and boys in school is mixed with boys being particularly disadvantaged in some areas like school discipline but girls being disadvantaged in others such as math and science. Therefore, we should expect that male and female students will respond differently to an increase in descriptive representation based on race, while Black and White students will respond differently to an increase in descriptive representation based on gender. In terms of symbolic representation, the relationship between descriptive representation and attitudes should be different for Black boys and Black girls, and different for White boys and girls.

Given that we are focused on general satisfaction and attitudes about school discipline, where gender is more salient for boys than girls and race is more salient for Black students than White Students in terms of outcomes, we expect gender representation to be more important for boys and race descriptive representation to be more important for Black Students. We explore, therefore, the impact of descriptive representation on Black boys, Black girls, White boys and White girls separately.

Research Design

For our analysis of descriptive representation we employ data from a 1994 study titled “Controlling Victimization in Schools: Effective Discipline and Control Strategies in a County in Ohio, 1994” (Lab & Clark, 1998, 1998). The purpose of the original study was to gather evidence on the relationship between discipline and the control of victimization in schools. The county sample consisted of ten public school districts, a Catholic school system, and several, mostly small, private magnet schools. Approximately 40,000 students were enrolled in grades seven through twelve in the schools located in the study county. Surveys were conducted of students, teachers, and principals in each of the 44 junior and senior high schools that agreed to participate in the study. Students were randomly surveyed by distributing the survey to approximately half of the students in each classroom in each school, while all teachers and principals in the participating schools were sampled (Lab & Clark, 1998, 1998).^[2]

For the study the researchers were able to collect data from 44 different schools, including 31 public and 13 private schools. The school districts that participated represented approximately 85 percent of the students in the county and were a representative cross-section of the county (Lab & Clark, 1998, 1998). The initial count of 11,085 usable student questionnaires represented approximately 35 percent of the students in the participating schools. The initial count of 1,045 usable teacher surveys resulted in approximately a 40-percent response rate. Principal questionnaires were returned from 43 of the 44 participating schools, giving a response rate of 98 percent (Lab & Clark, 1998, 1998).

Dependent Variables

For our analysis we are interested in explaining student general satisfaction and their perceptions of punishment within schools. Like questions about satisfaction with government institutions, dissatisfaction with the school should provide a sense of how well students believe the institution is functioning. We also focus on perceptions of punishment because it represents the policing role of educators applying the coercive power of the state. As such we believe students’ perceptions of discipline fairness could shape future perceptions of government and its power.

We measure dissatisfaction using responses to the following question: “Overall, how satisfied are you with your school?” Responses are on a four-point scale ranging from very satisfied (1) to very unsatisfied (4). The second dependent variable captures student perceptions concerning the appropriateness of punishments for various infractions in school. Students were first asked what happens to a student who commits an infraction, and then asked what they think of such a response. For example, students were asked: “Most of the time, what happens to a student who is caught being disrespectful to a teacher?” Students could indicate a variety of options from ‘nothing’ to ‘police being called.’ Students were then asked, “Would you say this response is: Too Easy, About Right, or Too Hard?” These types of questions were asked of students for cases of 1) students being disrespectful, 2) students who are caught cutting class, 3) students who are caught fighting with other students, 4) students who are caught drinking or using drugs, 5) students who are caught disrupting class, and 6) students who are caught with a weapon. Because our focus is on perceptions of fairness, we focused our analysis on those students indicating that the response was about right (coded zero) or too hard (coded one).^[3] For each student the responses to each of the six questions were then summed to create an index capturing the overall perception of fairness for punishment across all infractions; those scoring higher on the index believe a greater number of punishments are unfair.^[4] Students indicating too easy are not included in the analysis. However, the results of analyses using the entire response set differ little from those results reported below.^[5]

Independent Variables

Our key independent variables of interest are student race and teacher race. In terms of race we focus on African-American students, coding self-reported African American as one and all others zero. To capture the race of teachers we relied on the race of teachers responding to the survey.^[6] Thus, for race we created an African-American teacher variable that is the percentage of teachers responding to the survey in each school who are African American.^[7] In addition to race, gender should also play a role in affecting attitudes toward school. Like race, gender has had an impact on perceptions about education, although, as mentioned earlier, the impact is different from the pattern found for race. We expect that boys will be more likely to think that punishment is fair than are girls since boys are punished disproportionately (Skiba et al., 2002) but we have no expectations for whether or not girls will be more satisfied. We include a simple gender variable coded one for students who were female and zero for students who were male.

In addition to the gender of students, the percentage of teachers who are male should also have an impact on the attitudes of students. In so far as hiring male teachers will improve boys’ experience with school, male students in schools with more male teachers and a male principal should have lower levels of dissatisfaction and be more likely to think school discipline is appropriate than boys in schools with lower levels of male representation. To capture the gender of teachers we had to rely on the gender of teachers responding to the survey.^[8] Thus, for teacher gender we created a variable that is the percentage of teachers responding to the survey in each school that are female. In the case of the gender of principals we created a simple dichotomous variable based on self-reported gender, with females coded as one and males coded as zero.

Student perceptions concerning punishment will also likely be shaped by their educational experience as well as their experience with the disciplinary system with their school. For example, students who have been victimized by other students, punished for offenses in school, or who use drugs and alcohol more often are likely to have perceptions that differ from students who have not had these experiences.^[9] In our preliminary analysis of the data we found a high correlation (Pearson’s R .63) between having been victimized in school and having been in trouble in school; we, therefore, limit our control variables to the extent a student has gotten into trouble in school and the frequency at which a student uses drugs and alcohol.^[10] We also control for student grades because students who receive positive feedback from teachers in the form of high grades should be more likely to form positive attitudes about school in general (Reyes, 1993; Reyes & Jason, 1993).

Controlling for educational performance and experience with discipline is especially important given the historical gap that exists between Black and non-Black students. If Black students with high grades and little experience with school discipline share the same negative attitudes toward school as do Black students with low grades and or with a lot of experience with school discipline, then we would conclude that race has a direct and potentially more problematic effect on attitudes toward school.

In addition to controlling for educational performance and experience with discipline, we control for the harshness of punishment in each particular school as perceived by administrators. This control is particularly important because of the fact that African-American students generally perform less well and are disciplined more than white students (Haider-Markel et al., 2022; Keiser et al., 2021). Without controlling for the harshness of punishment, a finding that race affects attitudes about fairness may simply be caused by the fact that Black students are more likely to think punishment is too harsh because they go to a school with harsher punishments than their non-Black counterparts. To measure this, we include school principals’ responses to the question “for each of the following behaviors indicate the most common penalty assessed by the school - one nothing, two teacher disciplines, three send to principal, four notify parents, five detention, six suspension, seven call police.” Note that these are the same questions asked of students. Responses were coded zero if the principal indicated the most common punishment was options one through four and one if the principal indicated the most common punishment was options five through seven.^[11] Responses to these questions were summed to create a scale of harshness in school discipline.^[12] We hypothesize that students in schools where the most common punishment is on the harsh side of the dichotomy will be more likely to think punishment is too hard than students in schools with less harsh punishments. We acknowledge that this measure is based on perceptions that might not be entirely objective. However, we also note that teachers use discretion in issuing punishment, even when policies are clear or suggest zero tolerance (Haider-Markel et al., 2022).

It is possible that students in schools with high minority and large populations of low- income students vary in important ways from schools with fewer minorities and low income students. Consequently, we include controls for the percent of the student body who is African American and the percent of families in school districts with incomes below the poverty line.^[13]

We also control for the age of students because attitudes toward school in general since punishment may change as students age. In addition, students in smaller schools may differ from those in larger schools; we therefore control whether students attend public or private schools to account for potential differences in those types of schools. Given a high correlation between school size and type of school (Pearson’s R .42) our models only control for private (coded zero) versus public (coded one) school type.^[14]

Results and Discussion

Because the students were randomly sampled based on their school of attendance, we account for sample clustering by school by using the school as the primary sampling unit and estimating our equations with robust standard errors (see Primo et al., 2007 for a justification for this approach).^[15] For our analysis we first estimated ordered logit models to predict student dissatisfaction with school. We then examine interactions between student race or gender and teacher race or gender in a more intuitive manner by creating sub-samples of the data based on student race and gender (see Table 2). We estimate dissatisfaction and attitudes toward punishment first for non-Black students and second for Black students. Later, we do the same thing for boys compared to girls (see Table 3). This approach allows us to interact the student race variable with each of the predictor variables without causing a collinearity problem in the model. We use the analysis presented in Tables 1, 2 and 3 to test the various hypotheses discussed above.^[16]

First, we turn to a discussion of whether race and gender matter in predicting attitudes towards schools. The descriptive statistics of the data show that large majorities of students are satisfied, yet substantial numbers of African-American students are dissatisfied. For example, 35 percent of Black boys and 29 percent of Black girls are unsatisfied or very unsatisfied compared to 28 percent non-Black boys and 21 percent non-Black girls. Table 1 shows the impact of race and gender on the likelihood of being satisfied with school once we have introduced controls for personal experiences within the institution. The results show that race does predict dissatisfaction even when taking into account academic performance and school behavior, but that gender does not. The predicted probabilities for girls and boys show that regardless of gender, being Black increases the likelihood of being dissatisfied or very dissatisfied by about five percentage points (Black boys) or seven percentage points (Black girls) relative to non-black students of the same gender (see Figure 1).^[17]

In terms of punishment, most students are likely to think punishment is fair. However, sizable subgroups are likely to think it is too hard with Black boys being the most likely to think punishment is too hard and white girls the least. Unlike for the case of dissatisfaction, however, the most important variable predicting attitudes about punishment is gender rather than race. (see Figure 1). Boys are more likely to think punishment is too hard than are girls. Comparing boys and girls of the same race, we find, for example, that non-Black boys are about five percentage points more likely to think that punishment is too hard on three or more categories than non-Black girls.

Moving to our multivariate analysis, we can see that most of the control variables in Table 1 perform as expected; grades, age, behavior in school, and type of school all influence attitudes in predictable ways. Unexpectedly, public school students are less likely to be dissatisfied and less likely to think punishment is too hard. This may be because private school students have higher expectations for their school. We also find that schools with a higher percentage of Black teachers and schools with more male teachers are more likely to have satisfied students and schools with more Black teachers are more likely to have students who do not see punishments as too hard. Overall, the model shows that attitudes toward school are driven by students’ race and gender, the demographic characteristics of teachers, students’ experiences in school, and the types of schools they attend.

Overall, our results indicate that race and gender play an important role in explaining dissatisfaction with school and attitudes about punishment, even though majorities of all groups feel positive about the schools they attend and think that punishment is appropriate. But the question remains: does increasing descriptive representation by race and gender increase the likelihood that African American students and male (and or female) students will feel more positively about school?

As mentioned earlier, the impact of descriptive representation should be different for Blacks and non-Blacks and different for girls and boys. To answer this question we turn to our results in Tables 2 and 3. Examining subsets of the data allow us to determine if a significant interaction occurs because Black students respond to Black teachers or non-Black students respond to Black teachers, or both (see Table 2).^[18] Later, we do the same things for boys compared to girls (see Table 3).

Of central interest to us in Table 2 is the variable measuring gender and the variable measuring descriptive representation. In so far as intersectionality shapes attitudes, we would expect that difference would exist between boys and girls of the same race. Consistent with our argument that gender is most salient for punishment, our results show that when comparing students of the same race, gender is important in predicting attitudes toward punishment but not toward general satisfaction. In terms of overall satisfaction with public institutions, black boys and girls are no different from one another.

Our results in Table 2 also provide support for the theory of representative bureaucracy. The results in Table 2 indicate that Black students in schools with greater percentages of African-American teachers report lower levels of dissatisfaction than Black students in schools with smaller percentages of Black teachers even when we control for individual experiences with the school. This supports the view that increasing representation in the bureaucracy increases client satisfaction separate from improving the individual experiences that students have in the school. Calculating the predicted probabilities for the percentage of Black teachers from the model in Table 2 reveals that moving from schools with the lowest level of representation (zero percent) to the school with the highest (24 percent) results in about a 26 percent decrease in the probability that a student will be dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. Increasing the percent of African-American teachers also significantly reduces the likelihood that Black students will believe that punishment is too hard.^[19]

In addition to demonstrating that descriptive representation in the bureaucracy improves the attitudes of Black students, the findings fail to show support for the argument that increasing descriptive representation of African-Americans has a negative effect on the attitudes of non-Black students; Non-Black students in schools with more Black teachers are no less satisfied than those in schools with fewer Black teachers and actually are less likely to think punishment is too hard when there are more Black teachers. It is important to note that Black teachers are not in the majority in any schools and at their highest reach 24 percent of teachers. It is possible that negative effects of descriptive representation may occur for non-Black students if percentages increased beyond this point, but our results provide no evidence that negative consequences occur up to about one-quarter representation of African Americans on the school faculty. These findings support Rocha’s (2007) notion that descriptive representation can be a positive sum game (see also Rocha & Hawes, 2009).

In Table 3 we turn to an analysis that separates students by gender. We are particularly interested in whether or not gender affects attitudes when comparing students of the same race. Here we find that the impact of gender on attitudes is different when we look at people of different races. Black boys are more likely to be dissatisfied than white boys and black girls are more likely to be dissatisfied than white girls. Black girls are also more likely to think punishment is too harsh. We find no evidence, however, that black boys differ from white boys in their attitudes toward punishment.

The results in Table 3 also have implications for the theory of representative bureaucracy. According to the theory of representative bureaucracy, increasing the percentage of teachers who are male should improve the attitudes of male students, whereas increasing the percentage of teachers who are female should improve the attitudes of female students. The results in Table 3 show student dissatisfaction and attitudes toward punishment for girls and boys separately. The findings indicate that increasing the number of male teachers decreases the dissatisfaction of male students. Moving from schools with the least male representation (zero percent) to the most (67 percent) increases the probability that boys will be satisfied by about twelve percent.^[20] Interestingly, we find no evidence that decreasing the descriptive representation of women by increasing the representation of men has an impact on girls’ dissatisfaction, perhaps because historically girls have been well represented at the teacher level. We find no evidence that descriptive gender representation has an impact on attitudes for boys or girls in terms of perceptions of the fairness of punishment.

Finally, we turn to the intersection of race and gender presented in Table 4. Applying the scholarship on intersectionality to the theory of representative bureaucracy suggests that race will affect how boys and girls respond to gender descriptive representation while gender will affect how Blacks and whites respond to race descriptive representation (Gay & Tate, 1998; Mansbridge & Tate, 1992). Our earlier models do not allow us to compare the impact of descriptive representation on girls and boys of the same race or students with the same race but different sex. To investigate the possibility that intersectionality affects the impact of descriptive representation, we split our sample by race and gender. The results in Table 4 indicate that intersectionality is important for teacher gender descriptive representation but not race descriptive representation.^[21] While both Black boys and girls are positively influenced by race descriptive representation among teachers, only White boys are positively influenced by gender descriptive representation. We find no evidence that Black boys are less likely to be dissatisfied when they are in a school with more male teachers. ^[22]

We next separate students by race and gender to examine the impact of descriptive representation on attitudes about punishment (see Table 5). Although these findings confirm our earlier results that Black, White, male and female students have more positive attitudes toward school punishment when their school has a higher percentage of Black faculty, the findings do not indicate that the impact of descriptive race or gender representation is different based on the intersection of race and gender, with one exception. For most students, gender descriptive representation does not seem to matter in affecting attitudes toward punishment with the one exception of Black girls, who are more likely to perceive punishment as too hard when the percentage of male teachers increases.^[23]

Implications and Conclusions

Confidence in political institutions is based in part on citizen perceptions of fairness, either distributional or procedural, or both. The low levels of confidence in institutions exhibited by African-American citizens in the U.S. are often attributed to African-American perceptions that the system is unfair either procedurally or in the distribution of resources. Our research explored whether or not these perceptions can be found in the educational system and whether increasing descriptive representation can influence attitudes about institutions as well as perceptions of fairness in school discipline. We tested several hypotheses related to race and gender through analysis of a unique data set compiled from surveys of students, teachers, and principals in 44 public and private schools in Ohio.

Our study has several limitations. Our data are from a limited population in Ohio and the original study was designed for answering different research questions. Our data also are dated and largely rely on the perceptions of students, teachers, and administrators. Several of our measures, including our measure of Black teachers, are not as precise as we would like. Finally, we were not able to explore impacts for Latino students, like others have (Keiser et al., 2021).

Our analyses allow us to draw several important conclusions. First, our findings are consistent with other research finding a relationship between descriptive representation based on race and improved attitudes toward schools (Keiser et al., 2021; Roch et al., 2018). However, in addition to race, our findings indicate that gender is an important variable for understanding attitudes towards institutions. Although gender does not predict overall dissatisfaction with schools, it is an important predictor of attitudes about whether or not punishment is appropriate. Boys are more likely to think punishment is too hard than are girls. Interestingly, gender seems to be the most important variable in predicting attitudes toward punishment while race is more important for general satisfaction. Black boys are no different than White boys in their attitudes toward punishment, while both Black boys and Black girls are more negative in their general attitudes than are Non-Black boys and girls. Overall this supports the argument that different identities are more or less important depending on the saliency of that identity for the particular policy issue (Gay & Tate, 1998; Keiser et al., 2002). This is not to say that race does not matter at all since Black girls are more negative than Non-Black girls about punishment. However, gender is the identity that seems to better explain attitudes toward punishment while race is the identity that seems to better explain general satisfaction toward the institution.

As Headley, Wright, and Meier (2021) note, descriptive representation is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for improving perceptions of bureaucracy. They suggest positive interactions must also be present. Our study makes use of finer grained perceptions, but the lack of difference between Black boys and White boys in perceptions of punishment may result because neither had much in the way of positive interactions with the administration of discipline, regardless of teacher racial diversity in the school.

Taken together our findings highlight the importance of intersectionality for understanding attitudes toward public institutions. In so far as intersectionality shapes attitudes, we would expect that Black girls and Black boys (and White girls and boys) would have different attitudes from one another. We would also expect that Black boys’ and White boys’ (and Black girls’ and White girls’) attitudes would differ. Overall our results suggest that race is a more important identity for some types of attitudes whereas gender is more important for others. When looking at general attitudes towards public institutions where Blacks are clearly disadvantaged compared to Whites, we find little evidence that gender plays an important role in predicting attitudes. Black girls are similar in their attitudes to Black boys and White girls are similar to White boys. However, when we look at attitudes toward school discipline, a policy highly salient for gender, we do find differences between students of the same race. We find differences between Black boys and girls and differences between White boys and girls in how they feel about punishment. Intersectionality matters in ways that are consistent with how salient particular experiences are for particular identities.

The fact that intersectionality explains attitudes has important implications for the theory of representative bureaucracy. Our findings lead us to expect that the impact of descriptive representation would differ between students of the same race but different gender, and between students of the same gender but different race. We find that intersectionality is important for gender descriptive representation but not race descriptive representation.

Once we take into account intersectionality, we find that only White boys in schools with more male teachers are less likely to feel dissatisfied. We find no evidence that Black boys in schools with more or less male teachers differ in their feelings of dissatisfaction. In contrast, for race descriptive representation, we find no differences between Black boys and Black girls in how they respond to descriptive representation. In short, race modifies the impact of descriptive gender representation, but gender does not modify the impact of descriptive race representation on attitudes for Blacks. This finding is consistent with the argument that race is a stronger identity than is gender when the issue is not highly salient for gender (Gay & Tate, 1998). We might not see gender differences among Blacks because although it is clear that Black students are disadvantaged in schools whereas the educational performance differences between boys and girls are more mixed, which may make the race of teachers more important for improving attitudes for Black students than teachers’ gender. It may also be that symbolic representation related to gender works differently for Black and White boys. Future research is needed to explore this.

Although we do not examine the impact of descriptive representation on Latino students, the work of Hawes (2021) and others suggests that we should observe a similar intersectional pattern for Latino boys and girls as we observed for Black boys and girls. However, Hawes (2021) does suggest that the impact of representation will be greatest when institutional supports are strong and when client need is high.

Finally, our results shed light on the debate about whether or not increasing descriptive representation of one group had unintended negative effects on the group that loses representation. Some scholars argue that an increase in descriptive representation for a minority group will result in a loss for the majority group (see Lim, 2006) because it will lead to adverse outcomes for the majority group. Analysis by Putnam (2007) suggests that diversity in cities is associated with lower trust and lower political participation and some research on the bureaucracy finds that non-minorities feel more negative about the bureaucracy when the descriptive representation of minorities increases (see also Andrews et al., 2005; Keiser et al., 2021; Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009). In our analyses we find no evidence of negative effects for the descriptive representation by race. Neither Non-Black boys or girls have greater likelihoods of being dissatisfied when they go to a school with more Black teachers.

We find similar effects when looking at descriptive representation by gender with one caveat. We find no evidence that girls’ have more negative attitudes in schools with more male teachers except for Black girls who are more likely to think punishment is too harsh. Given that girls are overwhelmingly positive about school discipline, this finding does not raise a great deal of concern. Although Putnam’s analysis is concerned with broader communities, insofar as we can think of students within a school as a community, our analysis does not find such negative effects of diversity. One thing that distinguishes our work from those that find a negative effect (see Andrews et al., 2005; Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009) is that the clients in our study interact with one another within the organization whereas the clients in those studies do not. Our findings are consistent with research on work groups in educational and business context (O’Reilly et al., 1997; Page, 2007; Webber & Donahue, 2001; Williams & O’Reilly, 1998; but see Pitts, 2005), and perceptions of the gender composition of government committees (Baniamin & Jamil, 2021). Thus, and consistent with Rocha and Hawes (2009), we believe our results support the notion that diversity within bureaucracies can improve client outcomes, without a negative side effect. Indeed, increased descriptive representation may in fact be a positive sum game.

Funding

This project received no external funding.