Zen and the Art of Policy Analysis: A Response to Nielsen and Wolf

Abstract

We thank George A. Krause and Jeff Gill for helpful comments. All statistical analyses were conducted in STATA and replicated in limdep. All data and documentation to replicate this analysis including the complete STATA output can be found at http://web.polmeth.ufl.edu/ or www-bushschool.tamu.edu/pubman/ Zen and the Art of Policy Analysis: A Response to Nielsen and Wolf AbstractNeilsen and Wolf (N.d.) lodge several criticism of Meier, Wrinkle and Polinard (1999).Although most of the criticisms deal with tangential issues rather than our core argument, their criticisms are flawed by misguided estimation strategies, erroneous results, and an inattention to existing theory and scholarship. Our re-analysis of their work demonstrates these problems and presents even stronger evidence for our initial conclusion-both minority and Anglo students perform better in schools with more minority teachers. 1 Zen and the Art of Policy Analysis: A Response to Nielsen and WolfPolicy analysis is an art not a rote exercise. It requires informed judgement at every step of the process and an understanding of the implications of methodological choices. This exchange illustrates the importance of that art. In "Representative Bureaucracy and Distributional Equity: Addressing the Hard Question" we presented two key findings-in school districts with more minority teachers both minority and Anglo students perform better. We also addressed several interesting but tangential issues including the anomaly of overall test scores, the linearity of the relationships, and how equity and performance were linked. Nielsen and Wolf (N.d.) lodge six specific criticisms of our work:1. The appropriate estimation technique is a fixed effects pooled regression.2. We omitted a key variable, percent Anglo students, in our model. 3.The relationship between minority teachers and student performance is not nonlinear.4. Minorities should be disaggregated into blacks and Latinos; when this is done, there is no relationship between minority teachers and minority student performance.5. The appropriate unit of analysis is the student not the school district.6. Substantively weighted least squares (SWLS) is used incorrectly.Even if Nielsen and Wolf were correct (and they are not), only one of these criticisms bear on our key findings; the others focus on peripheral issues. Our response demonstrates that Nielsen and Wolf are incorrect in assertions 1 through 5 and misinterpret assertion 6 because they failed to read the relevant work in this area. We deal with each criticism in order. The Use of Fixed Effects Models 2Nielsen and Wolf contend that we have underspecified models, specifically that based on a Hausman specification test we should have estimated our equations as fixed effects models by including a series of dummy variables to represent the unique characteristics of each individual school district. With a panel data set of dimensions N x T (where N is the number of unique cases and T is the number of time periods), there are a myriad of possible models (Balt...

A Mixed Relationship: Bureaucracy and School Performance

“…In providing a theoretical rationale for a positive relationship between bureaucracy and school performance, and finding supporting empirical evidence, our argument is ultimately a logical extension of the theoretical perspectives of Meier (1994, 1995) and Meier et al (2001). We do not claim to have comprehensively contradicted public choice broadly, nor Chubb and Moe's (1990) neo-institutional framework specifically.…”

“…Of particular concern are serial autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity. There are a number of alternative estimation techniques to handle these problems, which have been discussed and adopted to varying degrees by others who have used this data set to model school performance (Bohte 2001;Meier, Polinard, and Wrinkle 1999;Meier et al 2001;Nielsen and Wolf 2001). The primary issue in pooled analysis is efficiency rather than bias; accordingly, we focused on making the hypothesis tests associated with each coefficient as reliable and conservative as possible (see below for specifics).…”

Structural Choices and Representational Biases: The Post-Election Color of Representation

“…Minority students are less likely to be tracked into low status classes, more likely to be assigned to advanced and gifted classes, less likely to be disproportionately disciplined, more likely to pass standardized tests, more likely to not drop out and to graduate from high school, and more likely to score higher on college board exams when they are exposed to minority teachers (see Meier and Stewart 1991;Meier, Stewart, and England 1989;Meier, Wrinkle, and Polinard 1999;Meier et al 2001;Polinard et al 1994). They are associated with fewer minority administrators being hired which in turn results in fewer minority teachers in the classroom.…”

Structural Choices and Representational Biases: The Post‐Election Color of Representation

“…A long literature has linked the election of minorities to governing boards to the subsequent recruitment of minorities to the bureaucracy (Eisinger 1980; Kerr and Mladenka 1994; Mladenka 1989; Polinard et al 1994). Although some condemn such practices as patronage and detrimental to the performance of school systems (Rich 1996), an extensive literature suggests that access to administrative and teaching positions results in policy outcomes that are likely to benefit minority students (Meier et al 2001; Meier and Stewart, 1991; Meier, Stewart, and England 1989; Meier, Wrinkle, and Polinard 1999; Polinard et al 1994).…”

“…An extensive literature shows that both African American and Latino teachers positively influence the educational experience of minority students. Minority students are less likely to be tracked into low status classes, more likely to be assigned to advanced and gifted classes, less likely to be disproportionately disciplined, more likely to pass standardized tests, more likely to not drop out and to graduate from high school, and more likely to score higher on college board exams when they are exposed to minority teachers (see Meier and Stewart 1991; Meier, Stewart, and England 1989; Meier, Wrinkle, and Polinard 1999; Meier et al 2001; Polinard et al 1994). The biases of election structure, therefore, are likely to reverberate through the entire education system and create additional biases in terms of gaining access to quality education.…”