WORKING PAPER SERIES Gendered Ambition: Career Advancement in Public Schools Robert Maranto (Contact) University of Arkansas 201 Graduate Education Fayetteville, AR 72701 [email protected] 479-575-3225; fax 479-575-3196 Manuel P. Teodoro, Texas A&M University Kristen Carroll, Texas A&M University Albert Cheng, Harvard University EDRE Working Paper 2017-18 The University of Arkansas, Department of Education Reform (EDRE) working paper series is intended to widely disseminate and make easily accessible the results of EDRE faculty and students’ latest findings. The Working Papers in this series have not undergone peer review or been edited by the University of Arkansas. The working papers are widely available, to encourage discussion and input from the research community before publication in a formal, peer reviewed journal. Unless otherwise indicated, working papers can be cited without permission of the author so long as the source is clearly referred to as an EDRE working paper. Gendered Ambition: Career Advancement in Public Schools Abstract We explore the relationships between gender, career ambition, and the emergence of executive leadership. In Bureaucratic Ambition, Teodoro (2011) shows that public administration career systems shape bureaucrats’ ambitions, political behavior, and management strategies. But career systems are not neutral conduits of talent: administrators are more likely to pursue advancement when career systems favor them. This research proposes that women and men respond to gendered public career systems. Using national and state-level data on public school managers, we find marked gender disparities in the career paths that lead educators from the classroom to the superintendent post. Specifically, we find that female and elementary school teachers take longer to advance than male and secondary school teachers. We also find gender disparities in certification and experiences among school principals. Accordingly, female and elementary principals report lower levels of ambition. Such gendered career systems may lead to biases in policy agendas and management styles. KEY WORDS: bureaucratic ambition, gender gap, gender and leadership, educational leadership Introduction This paper proposes a theory of gendered bureaucratic ambition, in which public administration career systems lead women and men to advance to management and executive ranks by different paths. Accordingly, male and female administrators in the same field tend to develop different degrees of career ambition, with attendant results for policy and management in public bureaucracies. In Bureaucratic Ambition, Teodoro (2011) argues that public administration career systems—that is, the institutions that define recruitment, selection, and promotion—make different kinds of individuals more or less likely to emerge as leaders of public organizations. 2 Systemic biases in career systems thus lead to variation in innovation, management, and political behavior among public executives. One well-established bias in public administration career systems not addressed in Teodoro’s (2011) work relates to gender, where recruitment, development, and promotional practices tend to favor men over women (Naff 1994; Daley 1996; Connell 2006, among others). The individuals who form the supply side of public administration labor markets are not ignorant of such dynamics. Connecting Teodoro’s (2011) theory of bureaucratic ambition to research on gender and career advancement, this paper argues that public employees are aware of the gender biases that typify the career systems in which they work. With this knowledge, men and women of varying ambition select into different career paths, with ambitious administrators seeking opportunities to burnish their credentials in ways that are likely to foster advancement, given their genders. One consequence of these patterns is that male and female middle-managers are likely to have taken very different paths to their jobs; another consequence is that male and female managers are likely to hold markedly different degrees of ambition for advancement to executive posts. Ultimately, gendered career systems are likely to lead to gendered public management, with likely effects on politics, policy, and public administration. We begin with a discussion of how bureaucratic ambition shapes managerial behavior. We then turn to public education in particular, tracing the gendered history of educational leadership and its evolution from predominantly female to predominantly male. Building on this history, we advance hypotheses on the differences between elementary and secondary principal posts and how these differences shape bureaucratic ambition in markedly gendered ways. Specifically, we argue that a gendered public education career system causes female and male educators to follow different paths into administration, and that these differences cause gender 3 disparities in ambition for executive jobs. We test these hypotheses with two datasets: the 2011- 2012 national Schools and Staffing Survey and the 2012-2014 Texas Middle Managers Survey. Analyses of both datasets demonstrate systematic, mutually-reinforcing gender differences in career paths and ambition among public school managers. We conclude with a discussion of the policy implications of our results and suggestions for future research. Bureaucratic ambition & gendered career systems The effects of ambition and systems of career advancement on public administration are the subjects of considerable recent research. A central theme of Teodoro’s (2011) theory of bureaucratic ambition is that public administrators’ political and managerial decisions are inseparable from the labor markets in which they work. The institutions that define professions and job opportunities can foster or frustrate advancement by different kinds of bureaucrats. Aware of the preferences and biases of the professions in which they operate, administrators and politicians alike set their expectations and behaviors accordingly. Ambition & public management Organizational theorists since Downs (1967) have observed that most administrators have mixed motives, typically both individual goals like promotion and job security, and public service goals like improved organizational performance. Downs posits that only zealots with single-minded devotion to a particular policy and statesmen dedicated to serving society as a whole readily embrace policies likely to risk their job security and promotion prospects. Such officials are rare. Generally, mixed motive officials and purely self-interested conservers (who seek to maximize their own security and convenience) avoid innovations since innovation requires effort and risk. Climbers, who seek only their own self-advancement, seek innovation if 4 likely to help their careers. Generally, analysts must consider such individual incentives in understanding the likelihood of public sector innovation. Following suit, a growing literature explores the implications of bureaucratic ambition and job mobility for public management and policy. A handful of recent studies link administrators’ job mobility to policy decisions (Teodoro 2009; LeRoux and Pandey 2011; Villadsen 2012; Adolph 2013). Maranto and Wolf (2013) develop case studies of New York Police Commissioner William Bratton and Washington, DC School Superintendent Michelle Rhee to argue that innovations that improve public service are unlikely to spread unless they are advantageous to top administrators’ careers. Regarding public education, several studies have linked career ambition and executive mobility to management behavior and/or organizational performance (Hill 2005; Boyne and Meier 2009; Hamidullah, Wilkins and Meier 2009; Teodoro 2013; Carroll 2016). This line of research is particularly promising because it links management behaviors and organizational outcomes to the microfoundational logic of individual administrators and agencies. Gendered career systems To date, research on bureaucratic ambition and gender in public administration have developed separately. In developing his theory of bureaucratic ambition, Teodoro (2011) observed that gender could condition bureaucratic ambition and career advancement. “Career concerns might affect administrators’ political choices if a career opportunity structure is systematically biased in favor of or against a particular gender…” argued Teodoro. “Individuals’ perceptions of bias in a profession can affect their behavior, whether or not a systematic bias exists (99). Despite this recognition, Teodoro (2011) leaves aside gender as a factor in his empirical analyses. 5 Research on women in public administration gives ample reason to expect that gender conditions bureaucratic ambition in important ways. This literature demonstrates the historical exclusion of women in public administration and its theory (Stivers 1991; Bearfield 2009). Given this exclusion, Stivers (2002) argues that gender relates to various administrative characteristics as women bring different experiences and perspectives to their jobs as bureaucrats. Meier, Mastracci, and Wilson (2006) describe these experiences in their research on “emotional labor,” implying that women bring unrecognized skills to their organizations. For instance, in a survey of public managers, women scored higher on scales of compassion and attraction to policy- making (Dehart-Davis et al 2006). These skills result in more effective client interactions (Fox and Schuhumann 1999), increased agency performance (Meier et al 2006), and different patterns of managerial interactions (Dolan 2000). As in elected office, women in public executive posts are increasing in number, but typically have more educational and organizational experience than their male counterparts (Bowling et al 2006). Educational administration as gendered career system The history of educational professions is to a considerable degree a history of shifting gender roles. In the 19th and early 20th centuries a great many educational administrators were women, in part reflecting stereotypes that women better fit childcare roles, but also due to gender discrimination in labor markets: women’s labor cost far less than men’s. Through the early and mid-20th century, administrative progressives “professionalized” educational leadership. Small schools and school districts consolidated and graduate education was increasingly a requirement for principal and superintendent posts. Part of this professionalization was redefining educational leadership as fundamentally male. As Rousmaniere (2013) details, the number of female school 6 superintendents declined through the mid 20th century. The percentage of elementary school principal posts held by women fell from 55 percent in 1928 to 20 percent in 1973. At that point the percentage of high school principal posts held by women, which had never been high due to the relatively elite status of the job, fell to 1 percent. Rousmaniere observes that by the 1960s “[i]n schools, it seemed to be the natural order of things that women taught and men managed” (102). Indeed, going back to the mid-19th century, as schools grew larger, school boards and American elites generally saw women as lacking the temperament to manage other women, much less men; instead they assumed male leadership could make (mainly) female teachers more efficient and effective. In the postwar period educational administration, particularly at the secondary level, was made male in part through the GI Bill, which enabled (overwhelmingly male) veterans to gain the credentials to enter administration. Perhaps more important over the long term was the development of alternative career paths to attract men to the teaching profession by enabling them to ascend to administrative roles rapidly, particularly through athletic coaching. As Rousmaniere writes: “The work of athletic coaching---communication, authority, disciplinary training of students, and public relations---aligned with the emerging professional identity of the new principal and, in a happy coincidence, provided the masculine image that appealed to both the public and to school reformers. An aspiring male principal who had a background in athletic coaching was automatically identified with a physicality that excluded women…The message was that school principals were not only responsible for bureaucratic paper-pushing but also for such physical work as supervising fire drills, breaking up playground fights, disciplining adolescent boys, and providing a virile and stabilizing presence in the school.” (p. 101) A 1971 study found that nearly 80 percent of school superintendents had coached athletic teams earlier in their careers. Similarly, surveys in the 1990s indicated that a fifth of elementary principals and half of secondary principals had coached (Rousmaniere 2013). This finding was confirmed in fieldwork in the 1980s (Edson 1988) and 1990s (Hill and Ragland 1995), which indicated that, despite the passage of Title IX in 1972, coaching male athletic teams was a 7 relatively quick pathway to principal; coaching female teams was not.1 Football in particular receives considerable attention and requires substantial organizational and political skills. Greene (2013) offers empirical evidence that high school football provides school and community level social capital which in turn improves academic success. Historically, school boards typically terminated female (though not male) teachers or administrators once they married, and nearly always once they expected children (Rousmaniere 2013; Urban 1982). While such practices are long gone, vestiges remain in the widely held view among superintendents and school boards that men treat education as a career, requiring upward mobility into administration to support their families, but women—particularly at the elementary levels—teach for a few years until they marry and have children, after which they may or may not return to education. Of course to some degree this is likely true for some women: female administrators may bear double burdens due to common expectations that they should shoulder most of the work of child-raising. Even in progressive institutions like universities, women may choose or be pushed into roles less apt to result in eventual promotion to peak posts (Rothman, Kelly-Woessner and Woessner 2011; Connelly and Ghodsee 2011). Within public schools, female administrators typically gain promotion more slowly and face particular challenges in relationships with elected school board members (McGee Banks 2007; Polka and Litchka 2008). Accordingly, fieldwork suggests that male administrators do not view women’s educational career paths as equal to those of men (Edson 1988; Hill and Ragland 1995). As one female assistant principal interviewed by Edson (125) put it: “I think people wonder about a female administrator. Is she a woman, or is she a woman who wants to be a man? Why would she want this job? I am a woman, and I don’t try to be a man. I would have had a problem, though, if I had been profoundly ugly or dramatically beautiful. But luckily, I am just an ordinary person.” 1 This finding accords with the observations of the lead author, who serves on a school board. 8 Reinforcing gender distinctions are the structural differences between elementary and secondary schools. Relationships and trust between schools and families are more easily fostered in elementary schools (Adams and Christenson 2000; Bryk and Schneider 2002). On the classroom level an elementary teacher typically interacts with perhaps one-fifth as many students as a secondary teacher. Elementary schools typically cover five or more grades while secondary schools typically cover four or fewer, meaning that the latter have far greater annual student turnover through graduation, with additional turnover from teens dropping out of school. Further, elementary schools are typically smaller than secondary schools (Snyder and Dillow 2015). Generally, elementary teachers are thought to show more dedication to their children (maternal roles); secondary teachers to their fields (expert roles) (Sargent 2001). In combination, these factors mean that elementary school principals can and often do know each student on sight. Such intimacy is unusual in secondary schools; indeed secondary educators often belittle the relationship building of elementary educators as maternal. The relative impersonality of large secondary schools has made them targets of school reformers from Ted Sizer (1996) to William Ouchi (2009), and increased demand for charter schools and other alternatives (Maranto, Milliman, Hess & Gresham, 2001). Yet in the view of administrative progressives who have dominated schools of education since the early 20th century, serving as principal of a large secondary school offers better preparation for a superintendent post than an elementary school could provide. The larger size, larger physical plants, athletic teams, and larger and more differentiated staffs of high schools are seen as providing more and more challenging budgeting and management experience – work more akin to that of a superintendent. Ironically, isolation from the classroom is often seen as positive for aspiring educational executives, enabling leaders to see the “big picture” of the 9 school district rather than the micro perspective of individual teachers, parents, and children. High school principals also have greater visibility, with opportunity to network with school board members and community leaders generally (Rousmaniere, 2013; Callahan, 1962; Brouillette 1996). Traditionally these have not been women’s roles. Edson (1988) and Hill and Ragland (1995) report that female teachers interested in promotion are often pressured to go into elementary rather than secondary administration. The latter suggests that such sexism is slowly fading, but in our national data (discussed below), 63.8 percent of elementary school principals are women, compared to 48.4 percent of secondary school principals. In contrast, women make up 89.2 percent of elementary teachers and 62.9 percent of secondary teachers. Women who do become superintendents are significantly older and more experienced than their male counterparts. In many cases they were asked to take leadership roles to help their schools, rather than seeking such roles. This pattern may suggest that female school leaders, particularly in elementary schools, focus more on serving students and less on personal advancement (McGee Banks 2007; Polka and Litchka 2008). Does gender matter for public management? Female leadership of schools may be positive for students. Given their traditional positions as outsiders, one might expect female administrators to embrace more idealism, prioritizing educational equity (Stivers 2004). To use Downs’ (1967) terms, we might expect relatively more women to act as zealots or statesmen (stateswomen?) rather than as strictly self-interested officials (though for a more nuanced view, see Perry 1997). Because women bring different perspectives, qualities, and acquired skills to the bureaucracy, female executives demonstrate different behaviors in their managerial interactions (Meier, O’Toole, and Goerdel 2006), strategies (Johansen 2007), and spending outputs (Dolan