Implicit Bias in the Era of Social Desirability: Understanding Antiblackness in Rehabilitative and Punitive School Discipline

Recent research provides evidence that teachers’ implicit bias may impact school discipline but has poorly defined discipline. This research examines if implicit bias impacts 7 discrete types of disciplinary decisions, ranging from punitive to rehabilitative. A survey featuring racial priming was administered to teachers (n = 287). Results suggest that implicit racial processing has more impact on punitive disciplinary decisions over rehabilitative ones. Interestingly, teachers were harsher against White students, which is counterintuitive to what we know about anti-Black implicit bias and racial disparities in discipline. Results suggests that social desirability is a powerful force that attempts to override anti-Black bias in certain contexts but could lead to a harmful lowering of expectations for Black students.

     

Higher Educational Cost-Sharing,Dual-Track Tuition Fees,and Higher Educational Access: The East African Experience

Three universal demands characterize higher education globally: the demand for higher quality, for increased access, and for greater equity. In East Africa, where resources are highly constrained, no nation has been able to meet these demands on the basis of public expenditures alone. Instead countries have had to increase resources from nonpublic sources, including tuition fees. In countries with strong resistance to tuition fees and where the difficulty of taxation is combined with a daunting queue of competing public sector needs, a dual-track tuition policy is especially popular whereby the most capable applicants are financed from public resources and other qualified students are allowed admission on a fee-paying basis. This article studies dual-track policies in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. We find that although rewarding ability, the dual-track policies did little to offer opportunities for the poor.