When Your Group Fails: The Effect of Race-Based Performance Signals on Citizen Voice and Exit

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Holbein, John B.; Hassell, Hans J. G.
• 署名单位: Brigham Young University; State University System of Florida; Florida State University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION RESEARCH AND THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1053-1858
• DOI: 10.1093/jopart/muy075
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 268-286
• 关键词: school report cards; group consciousness; democratic accountability; political-participation; Group identity; voter turnout; INFORMATION; education; CHOICE; achievement

摘要

In recent years, performance-based accountability reforms have become widespread-particularly in the public education system-as a means of enhancing service delivery and citizens' knowledge of and engagement with government. While an ever-growing literature has considered the overall effects of these administrative systems, few have fully considered the effect these have on underlying subgroups of relevance and inequalities in responses across these groups. In this article, we examine how citizens of various racial subgroups respond when governments send negative race-based signals about the performance of in- and out-racial groups. Specifically, we explore whether No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) race-based failure signals affect racial groups' use of voice in school board elections and their use of exit from local public schools. To do so, we combine school and voter administrative records in North Carolina with a regression discontinuity design that leverages exogenous variation around NCLB's race-based school failure cutoffs. Consistent with our theoretical framework, we find that white and black citizens respond differently to race-based failure signals. We find the whites are more responsive overall: responding to failure signals of various types both by voting in local school board elections and exiting local failing schools. African Americans, however, seem much more sensitive to racialized cues-responding at the ballot box but not by exiting when their group fails. These results show that while performance accountability systems have broader effects than previously realized: shifting the composition of local elections and distorting the racial makeup of schools.