No Child Left Behind? The Role of Race, Partisanship, and Descriptive Representation in North Carolina Title IA Funding Distribution

The prevailing explanations for disparities in public expenditures emphasize racial and partisan biases enacted by elected officials, mitigated in part by descriptive representation. However, most research focuses on federal officials, leaving questions about how appointed bureaucrats—who face less direct accountability—may act on their own biases. In my work, I construct a novel dataset to examine how the racial and partisan identities of North Carolina State Board of Education members shaped the treatment of local school districts during the Title IA funding process from 2014 to 2019. Contrary to prior findings, a greater presence of nonwhite and Democratic board members increased the number of Application Attempts required to receive funding. However, more Democratic representation was also associated with greater parity in the amount of funding awarded (Recipient Ratio). These findings, in conjunction with district-level poverty data, challenge assumptions about descriptive representation and highlight how race, partisanship, and accountability influence bureaucratic decision-making.