Practical Measures, Routines & Representations (PMR²) Whole Class Discussion Survey
Category: Student Learning
This paper examines a school-based participatory budgeting initiative as a form of race-conscious democratic design. Drawing on a multi-year study of Participatory Redistribution (PR) in middle schools, I analyze whether embedding deliberative structures into schools can empower racially marginalized youth. Survey evidence from two years shows mixed results: treatment students demonstrated knowledge gains and short-term increases in efficacy, though these gains weakened in less responsive contexts. Meanwhile, open-ended responses reveal short-term improvements in deliberative reasoning, with treatment students more likely than controls to justify their views with instrumental and normative arguments. These findings extend theories of democratic innovation by showing that true inclusion requires not only removing barriers but designing institutions to empower racially subaltern groups in the spaces they already inhabit.
Keywords
democratic innovation, participatory budgeting, deliberation, race-conscious design, education governance; empowerment
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/dq7c-qb29
