Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Representative bureaucracy theory suggests demographic and socioeconomic representation within the public sector workforce plays an important role in aligning discretionary policy decisions with public preferences (Mosher 1968; Krislov 1974) and garnering public support for public organizations (Krislov 1974; Gade & Wilkins 2013; Riccucci et al. 2014; Hong 2016). Since the initial theoretical link between passive demographic representation and active representation (policy decisions made in service to the interests of subgroups with a common identity) was proposed (Mosher 1968), scholars have empirically confirmed a relationship in a variety of contexts (e.g. Meier & Stewart 1992; Selden 1997; Watkins-Hayes 2011; Theobald & Haider-Markel 2009; Resh & Marvel 2010; Andrews et al. 2014) and begun exploring the factors that shape and moderate this relationship.

In the context of education, teachers exercise broad discretion in the daily conduct of their jobs, and prior research has shown that increased racial and ethnic representation among teachers correlates with improved academic tracking, fewer suspensions, and better test scores for racial and ethnic minority students (Meier & Stewart 1992; Meier 1993; Pitts 2007; Rocha & Hawes 2009; Roch et al. 2010). Others have demonstrated that racial and ethnic representation at the classroom level can also affect student achievement, teacher perceptions, and student attendance (e.g. Dee 2004, 2005; Ouzad 2015; Gershenson et al. 2016; Holt & Gershenson 2015). Broadly, these results suggest a mismatch between teachers and students along racial and ethnic lines can bear negative consequences for student outcomes.

On the other hand, several studies have found that demographic representation does not consistently influence policy outputs in the same manner as street-level bureaucrats (e.g. Meier & Stewart 1992; Pitts 2007; Roch et al. 2010; Resh & Marvel 2010). One potential explanation is organizational socialization, which some have found can partially or fully overwhelm racial or ethnic identification in some contexts, eliminating the link between passive and active representation (Roch & Pitts 2012; Wilkins & Williams 2008; Wilkins & Williams 2009).  

While previous work has considered the effects of time in an organization as a moderator of active representation through socialization, less consideration has been given to the potential for time at an organization to alleviate the negative effects of demographic mismatch. This may happen as teachers get better at navigating cultural differences between themselves and their students as they become more experienced. We propose investigating the potential relationship between time spent at an organization as a moderator of the negative effects of demographic mismatch on discretionary decisions, such as suspensions, and student achievement using data from the nationally representative Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002. The results of this study provides insights into possible strategies to mitigate documented negative student outcomes attributable to teacher demographic mismatch (Dee 2004, 2005; Gershenson et al. 2016).