Ten Thousand Democracies: Politics and Public Opinion in America's School Districts

chapter three: Public Opinion and Americans’ Commitment to Educational Spending

According to Everett Ladd, “Americans are deeply committed to the enterprise of education. We say so every time we are asked, no matter how we are asked—and we put our money where our mouths are” (Ladd 1995, 22). Ladd points to government expenditures that have increased steadily since the 1960s and to public opinion polls showing that most Americans think that we ought to be spending more, rather than less, on public education. We begin this chapter by reviewing forty years of public opinion polls in order to highlight the defining aspects of Americans’ views about educational spending. In particular, we are interested in identifying and describing lines of political cleavage that form the foundation of local politics. We then want to see how these political cleavages combine with the demographic composition of each school district to produce varying commitments to public education across the roughly 10,000 unified school districts in the United States. Political cleavages emerge because the history, economy, and culture of a nation give rise to groups that differ in their quality of life, their opportunities, or their values. In the United States, professionals differ from hourly workers, whites differ from blacks, and we see important political differences between inner-city and suburban dwellers, young and old, rich and poor—to note the most important social cleavages. These social differences then lead to different political preferences. The differences may arise out of economic self-interest (e.g., homeowners may be less enthusiastic than renters about increases in local 35 chapter three Public Opinion and Americans’ Commitment to Educational Spending property tax rates) or from deeply held values associated with one’s community, social class, or generation. Our exploration of public opinion begins with the array of social divisions that span the nation: those based on age,race,ethnicity,socioeconomic status, parenthood, and homeownership. These demographic sources of opinion reflect how social position creates policy interests based on both the benefits of educational spending and how the costs of educational spending are borne unequally by different taxpayers. In the subsequent section, we assess the“politics of place”—how region , type of community, and demographic composition give each school district a different level of support for education spending. We explain how we estimate local opinion in each of the nation’s school districts and assess the validity of our measure. Social Cleavages and the Demographic Sources of Opinion Surprisingly, there is little previous research on social differences in support for education spending. Most of the published research is based on postelection polls concerning local bond referenda and other tax increases . However, exit polls and postelection surveys of referenda are poor guides to public opinion, because voter turnout may be quite low and not represent the public very well. Such exit polls may not even represent the opinions of registered voters, frequent voters, or voters in school board elections very well either. For example, MacManus (1997) notes that the demographic makeup of the voting electorate differed substantially between Tampa’s 1995 (23 percent turnout) and 1996 (48 percent turnout) referenda. Tedin, Matland, and Weiher’s (2001) study is based on a Houston bond referendum with an overall turnout rate of just 10 percent. Just as we would be skeptical of a sample survey with a response rate well under 50 percent, we must treat findings from exit polls and postelection surveys as suggestive at best. In addition, exit polls from bond or budget referenda are not applicable to the more than 3,500 school districts that have no referenda provisions at all. 36 ten thousand DEMOCRACIES Scholarly research based on nationally representative public opinion polls is virtually nonexistent, and there are only a handful of state-level (Bergstrom, Rubinfield, and Shapiro 1982) and community-level (Chew 1992) studies based on representative sample surveys.1 Although the number of analyses is limited, scholars tend to agree that support for educational spending is rooted in self-interest and values . We do not intend to delve into the intricacies of arguments concerning self-interest and values here. Although this is a controversial area of research (e.g., Sears and Citrin 1982; Sears and Funk 1990), the gist of the distinction is fairly straightforward. Self-interested citizens support specific policies because they (or their community) stand to benefit directly if the policy is enacted; others oppose policies because they will bear a direct cost and see...