Latino Representation and Education: Pathways to Latino Student Performance

Abstract

The rapid growth of the Latino population in the U.S. over the past 15 years has led to a significant increase in levels of primary and secondary school enrollment rates of Latino children. Research on Latino education has demonstrated the institutional and contextual challenges faced by this increasingly significant group, but studies that link Latino representation and Latino educational performance have neglected to sort out the direct and indirect effects of representation on student achievement. The central assumption in these studies outlines a causal chain running from Latino political representation (school boards), to Latino bureaucratic representation (administrators and teachers), to Latino student performance. This study tests these theoretical assumptions by employing a path analytic model using data from 1,040 Texas school districts for the years 1997-2001 to tease out the direct and indirect effects of Latino representation on Latino student achievement. We find robust evidence of the impact of Latino political representation on Latino educational attainment in Texas, operating via a direct effect on the number of Latino administrators and teachers and an indirect effect on Latino student performance. Additionally, our results demonstrate that descriptive representation becomes substantive representation in the area of education policy for Latinos and that this relationship remains strong over time. These findings underscore the importance of school board elections and school district hiring practices on Latino student performance.

Latino Education, Civic Engagement, and the Public Good

“…5 Hess and Leal (1997) find that a greater number of minority teachers led to higher levels of college attendance among all students. Ross et al (2010) find Latino school board representation in Texas had a substantive direct effect on the hiring of Latino administrators and teachers. They also find representation has a strong indirect positive impact on Latino student performance.…”

Organized interests and administrative rulemaking: the state of Wisconsin's lobbyists and coalitions

“…Numerous areas of political inquiry have benefitted from the utilization of single‐state case studies in recent years (e.g., Miller & Curry, ; Chamberlain, ; Ross, Rouse, & Bratton, ; Rock & Baum, ; Cann, ). Indeed, Wisconsin itself has served as the setting for recent case studies on such topics as judicial elections (Williams & Ditslear, ) and legislative lobbying (Grasse & Heidbreder, ).…”

Descriptive Representatives, Party Status, and Latino Representation in Congressional Legislation

“…At the local level, an important literature examines the impact of Latino representatives on school boards and among school administrators on Latino student performance. Generally, Latino descriptive, or passive representation in these circumstances appears associated with better educational outcomes for Latino students (Meier 1993;Ross et al 2010). While existing literatures on Latino representation provides important insights, they do not assess qualities of contributions to policymaking, or whether party status affects the responsiveness of Latino representatives to Latino constituencies.…”