Who Creams? Explaining the Classroom Cream-Skimming Behavior of School Teachers from a Street-Level Bureaucracy Perspective. Issue 3 (27th May 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Baviskar, Siddhartha
• Is Part Of: International public management journal. Volume 22:Issue 3(2019)
• Page Start: 524
• Page End: 559
• Publication Date: 2019-05-27
• Subjects: Public administration -- Periodicals; 351.05
• DOI: 10.1080/10967494.2018.1478918
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1096-7494

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Ideas as to how and why individuals resort to creaming are generated primarily by a few qualitative studies and have, to our knowledge, not been tested quantitatively. This article aims to fill this gap and explains the classroom cream-skimming behavior of school teachers in Denmark, defined as prioritizing the teaching of academically promising students. Drawing on the street-level bureaucracy literature, it tests the following propositions: (1) creaming is directly related to an inadequacy of resources, and this relationship is moderated by the breadth of parental involvement in their children's education; (2) creaming is weakly related to the presence of bureaucratic success criteria; and (3) creaming is directly related to the level of parental involvement in and satisfaction with their children's education. These are tested using data from a 2011 survey of Danish and mathematics teachers in public and private schools across Denmark, and a class-fixed-effects design. Overall, the findings provide varying support for these propositions.