A parent emails a public school to ask a simple question. The only thing that changes is the family's faith — and whether the principal writes back.
Public-school principals are street-level bureaucrats — the officials who deliver public services face to face, with wide discretion over who gets a helpful response. Scholars had studied their bias by race, class, and gender, but almost never by religion. This study sent a large wave of inquiry emails to principals, randomly assigning the religious affiliation the family signalled.
Families that signalled they were Muslim or atheist were substantially less likely to receive a response than the religious majority. The penalty was on a par with — and sometimes larger than — the racial discrimination documented in earlier audit studies.
direction is shown here; the exact response-rate gaps are reported in the paper
The discrimination wasn't a flat penalty for a label. When families signalled that their beliefs were more intense, the response gap grew — suggesting principals were reacting to the salience of the identity, not merely noting it.
Schools are supposed to serve every family equally. But the discretion that lets a principal be helpful also lets bias operate — quietly, in whose email gets answered. When religious minorities are met with silence at the schoolhouse door, equal treatment under the law isn't quite equal in practice.
Pfaff, Steven, Charles Crabtree, Holger L. Kern, and John B. Holbein. “Do Street-Level Bureaucrats Discriminate Based on Religion? A Large-Scale Correspondence Experiment among American Public School Principals.” Public Administration Review 81(2): 244–259, 2021.
read the paper →a large-scale correspondence (audit) experiment emailing u.s. public-school principals · figures here illustrate documented directions; effect magnitudes live in the paper