How do public organizations turn policy into decisions that shape people’s lives? My dissertation explores this question through school discipline, a consequential encounter between students and public authority. Focusing on Delaware middle schools, I examine how school rules, organizational conditions, administrator perspectives, and racial representation come together to shape disciplinary decisions and outcomes.
Research has documented persistent racial disparities in school discipline, including differences in students’ experiences of suspension and other exclusionary consequences. My work asks what happens between a written policy and a disciplinary outcome. When an incident occurs, administrators must interpret what happened, decide how to respond, and navigate competing expectations about safety, accountability, student support, and fairness. These choices are not made in a vacuum: they are shaped by the rules, routines, and pressures of the organizations in which administrators work.
My dissertation brings together three connected studies and an analysis of the policy landscape.
The first study uses ten years of Delaware administrative data to examine patterns in school discipline and the relationship between disciplinary outcomes and the racial representation of principals and assistant principals. It asks whether—and under what conditions—the composition of school leadership is associated with outcomes for students from minoritized racial groups.
The policy landscape analysis examines student codes of conduct to understand how written rules guide and constrain administrators’ choices. It serves as a bridge between the study of disciplinary outcomes and the studies of administrators’ perspectives and practices, making visible the institutional context in which decisions are made.
The second study uses Q methodology, an approach in which participants sort statements according to their viewpoints, to identify shared ways administrators understand students, disciplinary incidents, and appropriate responses. Rather than treating administrators’ perspectives as simply individual opinions, this study considers how patterns of thinking may help guide decisions in complex situations.
The third study builds on those perspectives through in-depth interviews with administrators. It explores how their approaches develop and how they navigate discipline in everyday practice—including when they escalate an incident, seek an alternative response, or decide not to formalize it.
Together, these studies contribute to public administration and public policy research by treating school discipline not only as an education issue, but also as a question of how public institutions exercise authority and deliver services equitably. My research connects scholarship on frontline decision-making, representation in public organizations, and racial inequality to examine how policies are interpreted and implemented.
The broader goal is to move beyond asking whether disparities exist to better understand the organizational processes that may sustain or interrupt them. By identifying potential levers—from clearer decision-making procedures and administrator preparation to more transparent review practices—this work aims to inform fairer, more responsive public institutions in schools and beyond.
Recent Publications
Barnes, P., Pierce, A. L., & Jackson, C. S. (2025). How practitioners conceptualize and operationalize transportation equity in Delaware’s capital expenditure process. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 32, 101528. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2025.101528