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An ongoing debate in K-12 education policy has been between the "reform" agenda, including charter schools and school vouchers, and advocates of traditional public schools, led by educator unions. A similar split has emerged in higher education, particularly community colleges. Using California as an example, this paper: 1) summarizes the evolution of the current political divide between advocates of the "completion and success" agenda and faculty-led opponents, including the major reforms involved, 2) discusses the claims that leading organizations on each side have made, including their policy priorities, and 3) argues that the two sides share do share some areas of mutual agreement. The paper concludes by noting future policy considerations that could complicate reform efforts.

The United States retains many aspects of a healthy open society, but there are indicators of trouble and deep divisions around the meaning and importance of democratic values. This debate has significant repercussions for universities and their academic communities. In the most-simple terms, there is a red and blue state divide over the role and importance of public institutions, including universities -- red representing largely rural states in which most voters vote Republican and blue being majority Democratic voters, often with one of the two parties having majorities in their respective state legislatures. Then there are so-called purple states in which both parties are vying for dominance, but they are fewer in number. This brief discusses this contemporary dynamic and its implication for higher education and science policy.

Starting this year, tens of thousands of Russian freshmen found themselves attending a new mandatory course -- "Foundations of Russian Statehood." Swiftly designed under the auspices of Putin's administration, this ideologically charged course aims to position Russia as a unique civilization-state, bolstering Putin's political narrative and providing justification for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Consider, for example, this excerpt from the course's instructional video: "The 'Russian world' extends beyond current Russian borders, transcending ethnicities, territories, religions, political systems, and ideological preferences." As this curriculum becomes standard in Russian universities, it contributes to the emerging trend of weaponizing Russian universities and turning them into instruments in Russia's war of attrition with Ukraine and its broader stand-off with the West. This report discusses this weaponization process and the impact it is having on Russian universities, faculty, students, and the academic communities they belong to. It is regrettably a story of back to the future, reminiscent of the Soviet era of repression and attempts at control and manipulation of academics.

Chetty et al. (2022) say county density of cross-class friendships (referred to here as "adult-bridging capital") has causal impacts on social mobility within the United States. We instead find that social mobility rates are a function of county density of family capital (higher marriage rates and two-person households), community capital (community organizations, religious congregations, and volunteering), and mean student achievement in grades 3-8. Our models use similar multiple regression equations and the same variables employed by Chetty et al. but also include state fixed effects, student achievement, and family, community, schoolbridging (cross-class high school friendships), and political (participation and institutional trust) capital. School-bridging capital is weakly correlated with mobility if adult-bridging is excluded from the model. R-squared barely changes when adult-bridging is incorporated into the model. When it is included, mobility continues to be significantly correlated with the achievement, family, and community variables but not with school-bridging and political ones. We infer that county mobility rates are largely shaped by parental presence, community life, and student achievement. To enhance mobility, public policy needs to enhance the lives of disadvantaged people at home, in school, and in communities, not just the social class of their friendships.

In assessing the current and future role of universities in the nation-states in which they are chartered and funded, it is useful to ask, When are universities societal leaders as societal and constructive change agents, and when are they followers, reinforcing the existing political order? As discussed in the book, "Neo-Nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats and the Future of Higher Education," the national political history and contemporary context is the dominant factor for shaping the leadership or follower role of universities -- what I call a political determinist interpretation. We often think of contemporary universities, and their students and faculty, as catalysts for societal progress -- the Free Speech and Civil Rights movements, Vietnam War protests, the anti-Apartheid movement, Tiananmen Square, and more recently the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. Universities can be, and have been, the locus for not only educating enlightened future leaders, but also for opposing oppression and dictatorships. But universities have also proved over their history to be tools for serving the privileged, and reinforcing the social class divisions of a society; they also have been factories for errant theories that reinforce the worst of nationalist tendencies. Universities are both unique environments for educating and mentoring free thinkers, entrepreneurs, and citizens with, for example, a devotion to social change, or for creating conformists -- or all of the above. How might we assess whether universities are followers or leaders in their societies? This essay considers this question, offering a framework for evaluating the follower or leader role, and with particular attention to the emergence or, in some cases, re-emergence of neonationalist leaders and autocratic governments.

Hong Kong and Singapore are island city-states that exude the complicated tensions of postcolonial nationalism. Both are influenced directly or indirectly by the long shadow of China's rising nationalism and geopolitical power and, in the case of Hong Kong, subject to Beijing's edicts under the terms of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. Both have productive economies dependent on global trade, and each has similar rates of population density--Hong Kong's population is 7.4 million and Singapore is home to 5.8 million people. It remains to be seen whether Hong Kong's peripheral nationalist identity will be retained, or whether the increasingly assertive influence and control by mainland China will prevail and fully assimilate Hong Kong. But it is apparent that Hong Kong is at a turning point. Throughout 2019, protesters filled the streets of the city, worried about declining civil liberties, specifically Beijing's refusal to provide universal suffrage as promised previously in law and the disqualification of prodemocracy candidates, along with the growing control of Hong Kong's government and universities by Chinese central government designates and fears of an ever-expanding crackdown on dissent. Singapore provides a less dramatic but relevant example of the tension caused by the influx of foreign national students and academics who often displace native citizens, combined with government-enforced efforts to control dissent in universities. And like Hong Kong, the long shadow of China influences the role universities are allowed to play in civil society. The following is an excerpt from the book "Neo-Nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats and the Future of Higher Education" (Johns Hopkins University Press) that explores the implications of nationalist movements on universities in Hong Kong and Singapore. In both, university leaders, and their academic communities, value academic freedom and the idea of independent scholarship. Yet the political environment is severe enough, and the opportunity costs great enough, that they, thus far, remain generally neutral institutions in a debate over civil liberties and the future of their island states. The exception is the key role students have played in the protest movement in Hong Kong, but for how long?

The argument of this paper is set against the backdrop of a climate of intimidation, silencing, and fear that surrounds the discussion of several hot-button issues in academe, nowadays mainly having to do with race. An important and painful feature of this situation is that people on both sides of the issue feel vulnerable. The contribution of this paper is to help all involved to understand what academic freedom means and how it supports or fails to support the expression of controversial views. I show that a climate hostile to academic freedom is not an academic freedom issue "per se." It becomes an academic freedom issue when there is harassment, silencing, or dismissal of those who take a position within the sphere of their professional competence. At bottom, academic freedom is an institutionally-protected privilege relevant, above all, to employment law. Neither First Amendment rights nor anything resembling academic freedom exist in the employee-employer relationship in the private sector. The paper discusses the origins of academic freedom in the United States and the major changes in the understanding of academic freedom over time, particularly those relevant to extramural speech and the rights of students. The paper concludes with a discussion of five contemporary threats to academic freedom, stemming from (1) social stratification within academe, (2) university branding concerns, (3) the actions of conservative state legislatures, (4) the constraints applied by institutional review boards, and (5) the demands of social movement activists.

Federal incentives and requirements under the Obama administration spurred states to adopt major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems. We examine the effects of these reforms on student achievement and attainment at a national scale by exploiting the staggered timing of implementation across states. We find precisely estimated null effects, on average, that rule out impacts as small as 0.015 standard deviation for achievement and 1 percentage point for high school graduation and college enrollment. We also find little evidence that the effect of teacher evaluation reforms varied by system design rigor, specific design features or student and district characteristics. We highlight five factors that may have undercut the efficacy of teacher evaluation reforms at scale: political opposition, the decentralized structure of U.S. public education, capacity constraints, limited generalizability, and the lack of increased teacher compensation to offset the non-pecuniary costs of lower job satisfaction and security.

In this report, the authors present findings from their analysis of social studies state standards. The following questions guided their work: (1) To what extent do middle and high school (grades 8-12) history and civics state standards support teaching about political parties? For the states that do include language about political parties, what does an analysis of the standards tell us about what they expect students to learn? and (2) To what extent to do state middle and high school (grades 8-12) history and civics state standards support teaching about political ideology? For the states that do include language about political ideology, what does an analysis of the standards tell us about what they expect students to learn? The report focuses on four criteria: (1) The role that political parties play in the political system; (2) How controversial political issues map onto the political spectrum and party interests; (3) The ideological underpinnings of the two major political parties; and (4) How one's own beliefs fit within the ideological-partisan landscape. Findings indicate that, in general, state standards recognize that young people need to learn about electoral politics, and this includes learning about political parties and issues. At the same time, the standards give teachers little guidance about how deeply to wade into these waters. No state met the four criteria that the authors identified as necessary for informed engagement in electoral politics. North Carolina, Virginia and Vermont are noteworthy, because they include three of the four criteria: role of political parties, platforms, and ideological foundations. [This research was funded in part by the Gibb Democracy Education Fund.]

Over the past two decades, public higher education has become widely recognized for its contribution to socio-economic adjustment. This paper probes its evolution in two large and affluent democracies, the United States and Germany, whose higher education systems represent distinct ideal types. The analysis argues that public authorities in both countries have liberalized their systems to spur innovation in the provision of higher education. Yet a broad convergence in associated market expansion has coincided with divergence in its modes and consequences. Tracing how the two countries' policy regimes have created path-dependent trajectories of reform, the paper contends that the institutions associated with each state's inherited role in higher education--"enabling" in the US and "constitutive" in Germany--have empowered different social groups to shape state action. Under the influence of investors and managers, institutional drift and conversion have pushed public higher education toward corporatization in the United States. In contrast, interventions by faculty and students have moderated the effects of institutional displacement and layering on the German system's stratification. Given the sector's growing importance, this analysis carries important implications for the comparative study of capitalist evolution. [A bibliography is included.]

The roles of spirituality and spiritual learning in transformative learning are discussed. The discussion was initiated from an anti-colonial perspective on engaging spiritually in the political project of transformative learning, and it is grounded in issues of African education and in the principle of teaching critically so that education serves the spiritual development of learners and their communities. Transformative learning is seen as education that is able to resist oppression and domination by strengthening the individual self and collectives to deal with continued reproduction of colonial and re-colonial relations in academic institutions. It is argued that transformative learning must also assist learners in dealing with the pervasive effects of academic institutions' imperial structures on the processes of knowledge production and validation; understanding of indigenousness; and pursuit of agency, resistance, and politics for educational change. The following were among the recommendations to educators wanting to help students become critically and spiritually grounded and to engage in transformative learning: (1) give learners a sense of place, history, culture, and identity; (2) recognize that learners are not a generic, homogeneous group; (3) recognize the contextual variations and differences existing between teachers and their students; (4) create relevant knowledge; (5) teach collaboratively; (6) tell success stories; and (7) recognize the sociopolitical contexts of knowledge production. There are 39 references. (MN)

In this paper, we show that the election of a new school board member causes home values in their neighborhood to rise. This increase is identified using narrowly-decided contests and is driven by non-Democratic members, whose neighborhoods appreciate about 4% on average relative to those of losing candidates. We find that student test scores in the neighborhood public schools of non-Democratic winners also relatively increase, but this effect is driven by changing student composition, including via the manipulation of attendance zones, rather than improvements in school quality (as measured by test score value-added). Notably, we detect no differential changes when comparing neighborhood or scholastic outcomes between winning and losing Democratic school board candidates. These results suggest that partisan affiliation is correlated with private motivations for seeking public office.

The author outlines a unique integral transdisciplinary theory (model, map) for studying four meta-motivations universal to all living systems. Within this theory are four primary principles to make the whole integral basis for understanding motivation and all that it determines in perception, thinking, feelings, actions. The four meta-motivations are Fear, Love, Freedom and Fearlessness. This work continues the author's 25 year study of recalibrating W. societies' views and approaches to curriculum design which are truly emancipatory, rather than continuing a legacy of fear-based curriculum design and pedagogy that is wiping out the best qualities of the Natural, Cultural and Spiritual worlds. The author argues that the foundational meta-motivation (principle) of Fear is an "ecology of fear" essential to the understanding of the Natural world and thus, also, the world of human beings. Any notion of "living in harmony" with the natural world ("a la" Gregory Bateson and many holistic and indigenous educators) ought to engage the role of an ecology of fear. A list of related resources is provided in an appendix. [This paper was published by the In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute.] (Contains 4 figures and 8 footnotes.)

In this paper Peter Moss, a Professor of Early Childhood Provision at the University of London, challenges the hegemony of the market model in early childhood education and care. He shows how the market model embodies the values of neoliberalism and, drawing on the work of the Brazilian social theorist Roberto Unger, discusses "democratic experimentalism" as an alternative. The paper's aim is not to prove that one is superior or that these are the only two models available; rather, it is to show that alternatives to the market model exist, and that the questions raised by ECEC (early childhood education and care) are therefore ethical and political rather than merely technical. A bibliography is included. (Contains 17 footnotes.)

A study of adolescents living in red and blue counties during the 2006 midterm elections shows a striking pattern of Democratic youth thriving in political expression and debate when exposed to Republican ideological climates. Democratic adolescents were more likely to talk with parents and friends about politics, disagree openly, test opinions, and listen to opponents if they lived in Republican counties compared with Democratic youth living in liberal or balanced counties. Compared to Republican youth residing in the same communities, Democratic youth in Republican counties were also more likely to engage in political discussion, to pay attention to news media, and to express confidence in their ability to comprehend campaign issues. The frequency of disagreeing in conversations predicted support for liberal activism. Disagreeing was a particularly strong predictor of supporting liberal activism for youth living in red counties. These findings support the theory--proposed by McDevitt and colleagues in other studies--that young people sometimes express political identities through conflict and disagreement, not because they come to share the views of parents, teachers, or majorities in their communities. The same pattern was not found for Republican youth in Democratic counties during the 2006 elections; they were not more politically expressive when exposed to hostile ideological climates. However, Republican identity (like Democratic identity) correlated with knowledge of the political parties. The results suggest that Democratic identity is frequently expressed in deliberative and conflict-seeking activities, while Republican identity is often grounded in knowledge. Overall, the study suggests the value of peer-centered, critical discussion as a strategy for youth political mobilization. A list of state races where party control changed in 2006 is appended. (Contains 4 figures, 9 tables and 8 notes.) [This paper is derived from research made possible with support from CIRCLE and the University of Colorado's Innovative Seed Grant Program.]

In this working paper, the authors review the literature on college students' political attitudes and behaviors. It is hoped that this review will help to refine research questions and ultimately lead to a larger follow-up research study on college student political engagement. The literature review was based on the following three questions: (1) How do college students understand, define, and view politics, their political engagement, and the work of democracy? (2) Are college students politically engaged? How do college students practice politics? (3) How can institutions of higher education help foster greater political participation among college students? Several emerging and often overlapping trends came out of the review. The narrative of the authors' review might be described in the following way: There have been several general studies on college students as a demographic group with data on some aspects of their political knowledge, attitudes, values, skills, and practices. Much of the research indicates that college students today are cynical about politics and apathetic when it comes to political participation. However, after years of decline, there has been a recent increase in voting, trust in government, and other forms of political participation among college students in the past few years. There has also been a "scissor effect": years of decline in political participation have coincided with a surge in volunteering and involvement in community. There are various interpretations for the rise in community service and its implications for democracy, with many contending that there is no connection between community service and political participation; community service, it seems, may simply be an "alternative to politics." At the same time, there is a strand of literature arguing that there is a need for an alternative politics led by young people, and there seems to be an emergence of this "politics that is not called politics" on college campuses. Finally, there is widespread agreement in the literature about the great political potential of this generation of college students; and that colleges and universities need to do more to educate the next generation for democracy and provide more opportunities for political participation. This review of the literature also makes clear that while much research has been done on college student political engagement in the past decade, there are many interesting and important areas for future inquiry. Ultimately, an updated understanding of the current generation of college students' views on politics requires more than a literature review; thus, the authors believe that updated research with college students could be timely, contributing an important element to the efforts for democratic revitalization: the voices of the youngest generation. [This Working Paper was produced by CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement). For CIRCLE Working Paper 45, see ED491132.]

Unprecedented attention has gone to researching young voters, and yet one segment of this age group has been largely ignored: non-college (or "working") youth. Because very little is known about them, the following paper advances three fundamental concerns: What types of political activities do young workers engage in? What can be learned about them by comparing their political attitudes and behaviors to their college attending peers? and, What are some strategies that might be effective to increase their political participation? In responding to these questions, the current article reports data from a telephone survey of over 1,000 19-23 year-old working and college youth. The findings confirm that young workers (1) report lower levels of political socialization and interest as well as fewer civic skills, group memberships and mobilization opportunities than college students, and (2) are less likely to engage in a set of political acts than their college attending peers. The data also reveal, however, heretofore unknown patterns for this group, including that: political socialization and political interest are the most powerful predictors of participation for young workers; the cultivation of civic skills is a stronger predictor of participation for young workers than for college students; and workers who belong to groups and express an interest in politics may be the most ripe for mobilization efforts. The conclusion addresses how these findings could be used in efforts to engage young workers in the political system. (Contains 4 tables and 9 endnotes.) [This working paper was produced by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE).]

Conventional models of democratic accountability hinge on citizens' ability to evaluate government performance accurately, yet there is little evidence on the degree to which citizen perceptions of the quality of government services correspond to actual service quality. Using nationally representative survey data, we find that citizens' perceptions of the quality of specific public schools reflect publicly available information about the level of student achievement in those schools. The relationship between actual and perceived school quality is two to three times stronger for parents of school-age children, who have the most contact with schools and arguably the strongest incentive to be informed. However, this relationship does not differ by homeowner status or by respondents' race, ethnicity, income, or education. A regression discontinuity analysis of an oversample of Florida residents confirms that public accountability systems can have a causal effect on citizen perceptions of service quality. The appendix section includes the following tables: (1) Relationship Between School Characteristics and Respondents' School Ratings, Marginal Effects from Ordered Probit Models; (2) Descriptive Statistics, By Whether Respondent Identified Local Elementary and Middle Schools; and (3) Relationship Between Schools' Demographic Characteristics and Respondents' Ratings, by Respondent Characteristics. (Contains 11 tables, 1 figure, and 17 footnotes.)

This paper is intended to promote discussion among professionals, policymakers, employers, parents, and individuals with disabilities concerning current and future challenges facing secondary education and transition services nationally. The issues identified and discussed should not, however, be viewed as inclusive of the full range of possible challenges needing to be addressed. This paper (1) presents findings from research identifying key issues influencing the implementation of federal legislation relating to transition services at state and local levels; (2) examines the impact of national organizations, government reports, policy groups, and the courts on secondary education and transition services; and (3) presents the major challenges that the Center must begin to address immediately. These challenges have broad implications for special education and its relationship with general education and community agencies and organizations responsible for supporting youth with disabilities as they make the transition from high school to postsecondary education, employment, and other aspects of adult life. [This paper is based, in part, on a synthesis of research funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to the National Transition Network at the University of Minnesota and prepared by the National Center on Secondary Education and Transition for Youth with Disabilities.]

Many U.S. states provide public funding for charter schools--deregulated and privately managed schools operating in direct competition with government-run schools. While the impact of charter schools on student achievement and sorting has been intensely studied, less is known about the demand for these alternatives. Using precinct-level returns from three ballot referenda in Washington State, we assess the relative importance of school quality and community characteristics in explaining voter support for charter schools. We find that low student achievement predicts greater charter support across school districts, but is relatively unimportant in explaining variation across precincts within districts. Residents of districts with more highly qualified teachers and greater local spending were less likely to favor charters, as were districts with high teacher union membership. The strongest predictor at all levels was political partisanship: areas with more Republican voters were strongly and consistently more likely to vote in favor of charter schools. An appendix provides: Descriptive statistics, Washington school districts and King County precincts (table).

In the United States, people with more education vote more. But, we know little about why education increases political participation or whether higher-quality education increases civic participation. We study applicants to Boston charter schools, using school lotteries to estimate charter attendance impacts for academic and voting outcomes. First, we confirm large academic gains for students in the sample of charter schools and cohorts investigated here. Second, we find that charter attendance boosts voter participation. Voting in the first presidential election after a student turns 18 increased substantially, by six percentage points from a base of 35 percent. The voting effect is driven entirely by girls and there is no increase in voter registration. Rich data and the differential effects by gender enable exploration of multiple potential channels for the voting impact. We find evidence consistent with two mechanisms: charter schools increase voting by increasing students' noncognitive skills and by politicizing families who participate in charter school education.

In January 2004, college students from postsecondary institutions across Wisconsin were invited to join US Representatives Tammy Baldwin and Mark Green at The Johnson Foundation's Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin. The purpose of the discussion was to engage students' attitudes regarding politics, and their understanding of connections between community service and involvement in the political process. In this report, the author lays out the reasons for developing this event, recounts the exchange, and considers its ramifications for increasing youth civic engagement. (Contains 6 endnotes.) [This working paper was produced by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).]

First Amendment principles are fragile, unless they have widespread public support. People form lasting views about civil liberties and other political issues in adolescence. They are influenced by many factors, including what they learn and experience in schools. Therefore, schools' treatment of the Constitution and the press is important for the future of the First Amendment. In turn, schools can be influenced by state educational policy. A multivariate analysis of data from the Knight Foundation 2005 Future of the First Amendment survey, combined with data on state education policies, reveals that discussing the news media in class enhances students' attitudes and habits related to the free press. Also, when their teachers have required the use of news media in classes, students are more likely to use the news media regularly. Students who are directly involved in scholastic media have generally more favorable attitudes toward the First Amendment. For the most part, existing state policies that might be expected to enhance students' knowledge, attitudes, or habits related to the First Amendment do not seem to have significant impact. (Contains 14 endnotes.) [The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) promotes research on the civic and political engagement of Americans between the ages of 15 and 25. Although CIRCLE conducts and funds research, not practice, the projects supported have practical implications for those who work to increase young people's engagement in politics and civic life. CIRCLE is also a clearinghouse for relevant information and scholarship. CIRCLE is based in the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy.]

This progress report provides evidence for persistent influence of Kids Voting USA (KVUSA), an interactive civic curriculum taught during election campaigns. The entire research project consists of multiple waves of student and parent interviews, covering a three-year period. Respondents were recruited from families in Arizona, Colorado, and Florida. The students were juniors and seniors when first interviewed in the aftermath of the 2002 election. The survey results from that year, described in an earlier report, are used as a baseline indication of the immediate influence of KVUSA. Those results provided substantial evidence for the initial effects of Kids Voting on students, on parents, and on family norms for political competence. The question now is whether this optimistic impression is warranted once one looks at the long-term effects. In other words, did the curriculum exert a lasting influence or was its impact fleeting and ultimately inconsequential in the lives of students and parents? Based on a second wave of interviews, this report describes the extent of Kids Voting effects one year after student participation. The results show a consistent and robust influence of Kids Voting after the passage of 12 months despite controlling for demographics such as family socioeconomic status and parent history of voting. In 25 tests of curriculum influence, Kids Voting USA netted 21 effects in the areas of news media use, discussion, cognition, opinion formation, and civic participation. An appendix presents: Item Wording & Coding for Measures. (Contains 10 tables, 2 figures, and 2 endnotes.) [This working paper was produced by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE).]

Several nonprofit organizations provide instructional materials and guidance to support experiential civic education in schools. General evidence from national surveys suggests that the use of these products and methods improves students? political and civic knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors. This paper reports the result of a particular experiment conducted to study the effects of an ongoing national youth civic engagement program sponsored by the UVA Center for Politics called the National Youth Leadership Initiative (YLI). The experiment described here is unusual in two main respects. First, the YLI curriculum emphasizes experiential learning about politics and elections, on the theory that politics ought to be explicitly taught if the goal is to get young people to vote, follow the political news, and try to influence the government. Second, the YLI program was tested in an unusually rigorous way; students who participated in YLI were compared to students who received more traditional civics instruction. According to other studies, students who take civics courses are more likely than other young people to be knowledgeable and engaged in politics. However, it is possible that this is not an effect of the courses; rather, students who are already interested in politics elect to take classes on civics. Also, studies have shown that different teaching techniques and curriculum content have different types of benefits for students. The YLI research used quasi-experimental design to demonstrate that these particular civic classes?using experiential methods and emphasizing electoral politics?had statistically significant, positive effects.

This paper explores the effect of extra schooling, induced through compulsory schooling laws, on the likelihood of becoming politically involved in the United States and the United Kingdom. U.S. data come from the annual National Elections Studies and the November Current Population Surveys. U.K. data come from the British General Election Studies and the Eurobarometer Surveys. Results find that educational attainment relates to several measures of political interest and involvement in both countries. For voter turnout, there is a strong, robust relationship between education and voting for the United States, but not for the United Kingdom. This is largely due to differences in voting registration across education groups. Using information on validated voting, results find that misreporting of voter status cannot explain the estimates. Results suggest that the observed drop in voter turnout in the United States from 1964-2000 would have been 10.4-12.3 percentage points greater if high school attainment had stayed at 1964 rates, holding all else constant. However, when conditioning on registration, U.S. results approach U.K. findings. This may indicate that registration rules present a barrier to low-educated citizens' participation. (Contains 33 references.) (SM)

Civic involvement is a powerful opportunity in which young citizens can be more engaged in society. It provides young citizens with various opportunities to see themselves as contributing members to the community-at-large. Civic involvement enhances citizenship and civic engagement, allowing young citizens to develop a sense of community as an extension of their identities. Being engaged in civic society is an ideal goal for every citizen. The difficulty arises when maturing youths have little or no viable examples of civic and political participation. When a parent or caregiver is not fully engaged in traditional civic systems of society, their children will not be as well. Thus, youth organizations and mentoring programs become additional critical resources to ensuring a generation is fully engaged in all aspects of society. Civic engagement is not something that automatically occurs upon one's transition to adulthood. On the contrary, civic engagement is a developmental process that includes cognitive, affective and behavioral benchmarks. The origins of these benchmarks can be found in the various communities of practice. Civic participation provides individuals with civic skills that can be transferred to all areas of life. However, by adulthood, many individuals have little or no background in civic or political participation. In order to alter this disparaging fact, social systems must increase opportunities for youth and their families to be involved with service opportunities. Early exposure to service ensures that developing citizens are more likely to be active in the political process, take interests in the equal distribution of community resources, and find themselves more inclined to mobilize fellow citizens for a cause. In essence, civic engagement is more than a high level of altruism, buttressed by positive self-esteem, strong self-concept, and high self efficacy. This document focuses on the civic views of young adult minorities and how kinship communities and youth mentoring programs can work together to promote sustained civic engagement.

No other group is as disengaged from elections as youth. Voter turnout in the United States trails that of other industrialized societies, and is particularly anemic among youth between the ages of 18 and 24. The purpose of this study was to assess whether young people's expertise with information technology could be harnessed to stimulate a greater sense of involvement in political campaigns. A representative sample of California youth with an interactive CD featuring the 2002 gubernatorial election was provided. Participants were sent the CD two weeks in advance of the election. Following the election, they completed a survey of their political attitudes and opinions. In conclusion, the results from this pilot study suggest that a synthesis of political content and interactive technology can engage youth.

Increasingly, education systems are being privatized through various changes to organizational structures, to school management, and to funding mechanisms. Yet education remains publicly funded and therefore accountable to taxpayer preferences through voting mandates. This paper investigates the determinants of political support for the privatization of education in the United Kingdom. The electorate is assumed to apply cost-benefit calculations, depending on their circumstances, and a set of criteria for evaluating educational reforms is linked to individual voters' characteristics. It is then possible to identify which voters would oppose or advocate educational reforms such as greater school competition, ability selection, and promotion of private schooling. Support for these reforms is then estimated using the British Educational Panel Survey. The results indicate that political preferences largely reflect the anticipated personal costs and benefits from educational reforms. Those with children are in favor of reforms to raise school competition, whereas those working in the education sector are against such reform. Those with higher anticipated tax liabilities favor privatization and support private schooling. Overall, however, educational reforms toward privatization received only minority support in Britain as of 1997. (Contains 29 references and 6 tables.) (Author/RT)

Upon assuming power for the first time in 1935, the Norwegian Labour Party delivered on its promise of a major schooling reform. The reform raised minimum instruction time in less developed rural areas and boosted the resources available to rural schools, reducing class size and increasing teacher salaries. We document that cohorts more intensively affected by the reform significantly increased their education and experienced higher labor income. Our main result is that the schooling reform also substantially increased support for the Norwegian Labour Party in subsequent elections. This additional support persisted for several decades and was pivotal in maintaining support for the social democratic coalition in Norway. These results are not driven by the direct impact of education and are not explained by higher turnout, or greater attention or resources from the Labour Party targeted towards the municipalities most affected by the reform. Rather, our evidence suggests that cohorts that benefited from the schooling reform, and their parents, rewarded the party for delivering a major reform that was beneficial to them. [Additional financial support for this report was provided by the Norwegian Research Council.]

The Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) database based on the American Freshmen Survey provides data for use in making marketing and management decisions in colleges and universities. This paper describes an operational cooperative model for managing and exploiting the data that CIRP makes available. The paper also offers an example of the substantive insights that can be derived from such cooperation. Additional sections: (1) provide a description of a project for sharing CIRP data among the members of an existing consortium, the institutions that are involved in the effort, and the student data in the resulting database; (2) discuss the scales used in the study constructed from the CIRP measures of social and political values and the creation of a general index of liberalism; (3) examine the differences among and within institutions on this index; (4) explore the characteristics of institutions that appear to contribute to differences in the social/political orientations of their freshmen classes; and (5) provide summary observations and suggestions for further research. Analysis suggested that various institutional characteristics and student academic orientations (i.e., intended major) are associated with measurable differences on an index of social/political liberalism. (GLR)

This study examined what makes college students feel positive about the potential and need for change in racial relations, particularly whether a student's own race is a significant factor. Data were drawn from an initial sample of 24,847 first-time freshmen who completed the 1985 survey and a 1989 follow-up instrument to measure how students' commitment to fostering racial understanding changes over time using a large, nationwide sample. Overall, findings indicate that exposure to liberal viewpoints and cultural and ethnic issues do further racial understanding. However, while the overall change was marginally positive, the differential rates of change appeared to separate white students and black students even further apart than when they first began college. Black students believed promoting racial understanding was an important issue regardless of what else is going on in college. The college years appeared to empower black students to greatly increase their commitment to easing racial tensions. White students did not gain the same degree of commitment to promoting racial understanding. For both black students and white students, the most significant effects on their commitment came from discussing racial and ethnic issues as well as their initial commitment to racial understanding as freshmen. (Contains 35 references.) (JB)

A study compared the political action, attitudes, and behavior of union members and members of union households to those of individuals who are not affiliated with a union. National data from the 1950s through the 1980s on the political identification, beliefs, and behavior of union/union household members and nonmembers were analyzed along with information gathered during extensive interviews with 30 state/local union leaders that were conducted throughout Ohio in 1990. The analysis established that, since 1952, the nonwhite and female components of union membership have more than doubled, overall union membership has declined, and the unionized work force has become more white collar. Other study findings were as follows: (1) union members remain more likely to vote Democratic than persons from nonunion households; (2) voter turnout is higher among urban union members (but not among their household members) than among the general population; and (3) unions still retain significant political influence over their members (but not over members' households). (Fifteen tables and 10 references are included. Included in 17 appendixes are the following: detailed demographic information on union members/nonmembers; information on the attitudes of labor unions, big business, and the Democratic and Republican parties; and the interview guide.) (MN)

While education has historically enjoyed widespread bipartisan support, the aftermath of the pandemic, among other factors, has dramatically reshaped the field's political climate. This transformation, marked by increasing political tensions that impact students, schools and teachers, signifies a shift away from traditional educational policy practices. "Crossing the Partisan Divide in Education Policy" offers timely insight on how to effect meaningful policy change in education. The paper draws on recent examples from across the political landscape and offers five key success factors to serve as a roadmap for advocates, policymakers, and other education leaders. This paper aims to inspire hope and stimulate strategic thinking among advocates seeking to navigate today's politically polarized climate.

America faces a growing crisis about who can say what on our college campuses. At root this is a crisis of authority. In recent decades university administrators, professors, and student activists have quietly excluded more and more voices from the exchange of views on campus. This has taken shape in several ways, not all of which are reducible to violations of "academic freedom." The pages in this report are parts of a single chart that compares fourteen published statements on academic freedom in twenty-five categories. The oldest of the statements is the 1915 "Declaration of Principles" from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The newest is the April 29, 2017 "Statement of Principles: Free Expression on Campuses issued by Students for Free Expression." In addition to the chart, the report includes: (1) an annotated Timeline of Academic Freedom, with notable events such as Supreme Court decisions and riots; (2) a list of significant Other Resources by organizations such as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the Heterodox Academy; and (3) a Select Bibliography.