Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T06:36:06.221Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Politics of Choice Reconsidered: Partisanship, Ideology, and Minority Politics in Washington's Charter School Initiative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Loren Collingwood ,
Ashley Jochim  and
Kassra A. R. Oskooii
Loren Collingwood
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA
Ashley Jochim
Affiliation:
University of Washington, Bothell, WA, USA
Kassra A. R. Oskooii*
Affiliation:
University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
*
Kassra A. R. Oskooii, University of Delaware, 403 Smith Hall, 18 Amstel Ave., Newark, DE 19716, USA. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Charter schools enjoy support among Republican and Democratic lawmakers in states and Congress, but little research has examined their support among the electorate. We take advantage of Washington's 2012 charter school ballot initiative—the first voter-approved charter initiative in the United States—to shed light on the politics of school choice at the mass level. Because in-depth, individual-level voter data are often unavailable in state-level elections, we leverage extensive precinct- and district-level data to examine patterns of support and opposition toward the charter school initiative, focusing on how partisanship, ideology, and demographic factors serve to unify or divide voters. Our analysis reveals that the coalition of supporters cut across usual partisan and demographic cleavages, producing somewhat strange bedfellows. This finding has important implications for the strategies advocacy groups may consider as they seek to expand or limit school choice programs via ballot initiatives as opposed to the statehouse, and provides suggestive evidence regarding the evolving shapers of voter support for school choice and ballot initiatives more generally.

Keywords

direct democracypolitical behaviorracial and ethnic politicsidentity/group politicseducation policypublic policyGIS/spatial analysismethodologyvoting and elections
Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 61 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bali, Valentina A. 2008. “The Passage of Education Citizen Initiatives: Evidence from California.” Educational Policy 22 (3): 422–56..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banducci, Susan A. 1998. “Searching for Ideological Consistency in Direct Legislation Voting.” In Citizens as Legislators: Direct Democracy in the United States. Edited by: Shaun, Bowler, Donovan, Todd, and Tolbert, Caroline J.. Ohio State University Press, Columbus. 109–131.Google Scholar
Bivand, Roger, Pebesma, Edzer, and Gómez-Rubio, Virgilio. 2013. Applied Spatial Data Analysis with R (second edition). New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowler, Shaun, and Donovan, Todd. 1994. “Information and Opinion Change on Ballot Propositions.” Political Behavior 16 (4): 411–35..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowler, Shaun, Donovan, Todd, and Happ, Trudi. 1992. “Ballot Propositions and Information Costs: Direct Democracy and the Fatigued Voter.” Western Political Quarterly 45 (2): 559–68..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donovan, Todd, and Bowler, Shaun. 1998. Demanding Choices: Opinion, Voting, and Direct Democracy. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Bowler, Shaun, Donovan, Todd, and Tolbert, Caroline J.. 1998. Citizens as Legislators: Direct Democracy in the United States. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar
Bozdogan, Hamparsum. 1987. “Model Selection and Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC): The General Theory and Its Analytical Extensions.” Psychometrika 52 (3): 345–70..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Branton, Regina P. 2003. “Examining Individual-Level Voting Behavior on State Ballot Propositions.” Political Research Quarterly 56 (3): 367–77..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Branton, Regina P. 2004. “Voting in Initiative Elections: Does the Context of Racial and Ethnic Diversity Matter? State Politics & Policy Quarterly 4 (3): 294–317..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broder, David S. 2000. Democracy Derailed: Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Brunner, Eric J., and Imazeki, Jennifer. 2008. “Tiebout Choice and Universal School Vouchers.” Journal of Urban Economics 63 (1): 253–79..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brunner, Eric J., and Sonstelie, Jon. 2003. “Homeowners, Property Values, and the Political Economy of the School Voucher.” Journal of Urban Economics 54 (2): 239–57..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brunner, Eric. J., Sonstelie, Jon, and Thayer, Mark. 2001. “Capitalization and the Voucher: An Analysis of Precinct Returns from California's Proposition 174.” Journal of Urban Economics 50 (3): 517–36..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Center for Research and Education Outcomes. 2009. “Charter School Performance in 16 States.” Center for Research and Education Outcomes, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Center for Research and Education Outcomes. 2013. “National Charter School Study.” Center for Research and Education Outcomes, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Chubb, John E., and Moe, Terry M.. 2011. Politics, Markets, and America's Schools. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Collingwood, Loren, Oskooii, Kassra, Garcia-Rios, Sergio, and Barreto, Matt. 2016. “eiCompare: Comparing Ecological Inference Estimates across EI and EI:R×C.” R Journal 8 (2): 92–101..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corcoran, Sean P., and Stoddard, Christiana. 2011. “Local Demand for a School Choice Policy: Evidence from the Washington Charter School Referenda.” Education 6 (3): 323–53..Google Scholar
Cronin, Thomas E. 1999. Direct Democracy: The Politics of Initiative, Referendum, and Recall. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.Google Scholar
DeBray-Pelot, Elizabeth H., Lubienski, Christopher A., and Scott, Janelle T.. 2007. “The Institutional Landscape of Interest Group Politics and School Choice.” Peabody Journal of Education 82 (2–3): 204–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Richard J. 2002. Democratic Delusions: The Initiative Process in America. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Green, Donald P., Palmquist, Bradley, and Schickler, Eric. 2004. Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hassel, Bryan C. 2011. The Charter School Challenge: Avoiding the Pitfalls, Fulfilling the Promise. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Henig, Jeffrey R. 1995. Rethinking School Choice: Limits of the Market Metaphor. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoeting, Jennifer A., Madigan, David, Raftery, Adrian E., and Volinsky, Chris T.. 1999. “Bayesian Model Averaging: A Tutorial.” Statistical Science 14:382–401.Google Scholar
Holyoke, Thomas T., Henig, Jeffrey R., Brown, Heath, and Lacireno-Paquet, Natalie. 2009. “Policy Dynamics and the Evolution of State Charter School Laws.” Policy Sciences 42 (1): 33–55..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karp, Jeffrey A. 1998. “The Influence of Elite Endorsements in Initiative Campaigns.” In Citizens as Legislators: Direct Democracy in the United States, Shaun Bowler, Todd Donovan, and Caroline J. Tolbert. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. 149–65.Google Scholar
Key, Valdimer. 1949. Southern Politics in State and Nation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
King, Gary. 2013. A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate Data. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Gary, and Zeng, Langche. 2001. “Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data.” Political Analysis 9:137–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leal, David L. 2004. “Latinos and School Vouchers: Testing the ‘Minority Support’ Hypothesis.” Social Science Quarterly 85 (5): 1227–37..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Jaekyung. 2002. “Racial and Ethnic Achievement Gap Trends: Reversing the Progress toward Equity?” Educational Researcher 31 (1): 3–12..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewkowicz, Michael A. 2006. “The Effectiveness of Elite Cues as Heuristics in Proposition Elections.” American Politics Research 34 (1): 51–68..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lublin, David. 1999. The Paradox of Representation: Racial Gerrymandering and Minority Interests in Congress. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lupia, Arthur. 1994. “Shortcuts versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections.” American Political Science Review 88:63–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magleby, David B. 1984. Direct Legislation: Voting on Ballot Propositions in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Mintrom, Michael. 1997. “Policy Entrepreneurs and the Diffusion of Innovation.” American Journal of Political Science 41:738–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Association of Charter School Authorizers. 2015. “State of Charter Authorizing 2015 Report.” Chicago: National Association of Charter School Authorizers.Google Scholar
Nicholson, Stephen P. 2003. “The Political Environment and Ballot Proposition Awareness.” American Journal of Political Science 47 (3): 403–10..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicholson, Stephen P. 2005. Voting the Agenda: Candidates, Elections, and Ballot Propositions. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Reardon, Sean F. 2011. “The Widening Academic Achievement Gap between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations.” In Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances, Editors: Greg J., Duncan, and Richard J. Murnane, New York: Russel Sage Foundation. 91–116.Google Scholar
Reckhow, Sarah, Grossmann, Matt, and Evans, Benjamin C.. 2015. “Policy Cues and Ideology in Attitudes toward Charter Schools.” Policy Studies Journal 43 (2): 207–27..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Renzulli, Linda A. 2005. “Organizational Environments and the Emergence of Charter Schools in the United States.” Sociology of Education 78 (1): 1–26..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rhodes, Jesse. 2012. An Education in Politics: The Origins and Evolution of No Child Left Behind. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schrag, Peter. 2004. Paradise Lost: California's Experience, America's Future: Updated with a New Preface. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Shaw, Linda. 2000. “New Faces, Big Money behind Charter School Vote.” Seattle Times, October.Google Scholar
Smith, Daniel A. 2013. Tax Crusaders and the Politics of Direct Democracy. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Kevin B., and Meier, Kenneth J.. 1995. The Case against School Choice: Politics, Markets, and Fools. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Stratmann, Thomas. 2006. “Is Spending more Potent for or against a Proposition? Evidence from Ballot Measures.” American Journal of Political Science 50 (3): 788–801..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tedin, Kent L., and Weiher, Gregory R.. 2004. “Racial/Ethnic Diversity and Academic Quality as Components of School Choice.” Journal of Politics 66 (4): 1109–33..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tolbert, Caroline J., and Grummel, John A.. 2003. “Revisiting the Racial Threat Hypothesis: White Voter Support for California's Proposition 209.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly 3:183–202.Google Scholar
Vergari, Sandra. 2007. “The Politics of Charter Schools.” Educational Policy 21 (1): 15–39..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiher, Gregory R., and Tedin, Kent L.. 2002. “Does Choice Lead to Racially Distinctive Schools? Charter Schools and Household Preferences.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 21 (1): 79–92..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Kerry A. 1996. “Choice Plans Face Big Statewide Test in Wash.” Education Week, October, https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1996/10/30/09ref.h16.html.Google Scholar
Wong, Kenneth K., and Langevin, Warren E.. 2007. “Policy Expansion of School Choice in the American States.” Peabody Journal of Education 82 (2–3): 440–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Kenneth K., and Shen, Francis X.. 2002. “Politics of State-Led Reform in Education: Market Competition and Electoral Dynamics.” Educational Policy 16 (1): 161–92..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Yahong, and Yang, Kaifeng. 2008. “What Drives Charter School Diffusion at the Local Level: Educational Needs or Political and Institutional Forces?” Policy Studies Journal 36 (4): 571–91..CrossRefGoogle Scholar