Claudia Diehl (University of Konstanz)

Students’ perceptions of fairness in school

Abstract: This paper asks why ethnic minority students are more likely than majority students to feel unfairly treated in school. It applies a broader theoretical framework to 7th graders’ perceptions that they should be in a higher track. We use survey data from Germany, where students are assigned to different educational tracks at an early age. We show that ethnic minority students are more likely than majority students to be placed in the lowest track and also more likely to perceive their track placement as unfair. We test two explanations for this “perception gap” between groups. First, minority students may actually be more likely than majority students to be placed in a track that is too low for them (exposure to unfair treatment). Second, as children of often highly ambitious parents, minority students may feel a greater need to attribute limited educational success to unfair treatment in order to protect their self-esteem (ex-post rationalization of failure). We find that compared to majority students, minority students’ perceptions of being on the wrong track are less closely related to actual unfair treatment. Rather, it is high and unmet parental expectations that account for most of the “perception gap” between majority and minority students.