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A conference paper about investigating the effects of political science education on the feelings of the students for the U.S. and its political system is presented. It discusses impact of political scientists' curricular practices and pedagogical approaches on students. It examines the political courses introduced by political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, and explores how learning about American politics in comparative perspective affected students' attitudes towards the U.S.

This paper explores school as a key site at which, at this moment in history, U. S. nationalism is produced and national identities and belonging are constructed in relation to the Arab/Muslim “Other.” Drawing on a qualitative research project in a large ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students of decision making and foreign policy have long remarked on the difficulty leaders experience in "learning" the lessons of history. But the phenomenon is woefully under-researched. This paper explores various causes of the failure to learn from history, using post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy for purposes of illustration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will argue against the implementation of public policies which require or encourage individual teacher bonuses based on student test scores. Teacher incentive programs as they are now conceived and implemented in Public Education Policy are unable to produce higher levels of student success. Student achievement is often characterized as job skills learned in comparison to other students worldwide. Success and failure in student achievement should no longer be measured in terms of standardized test scores. Due to outsourcing, an increasing number of jobs in the United States require applicants to acquire advanced degrees. The traditional basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer sufficient to keep American students competitive with advanced international students. Standardized testing, because it evaluates only basic skills, is not an adequate measure of student success. In order to better account for worldwide competition, measures of student achievement should compare job skills between American and international students in terms of human capital. Programs which link teacher pay to test scores will only stagnate the intellectual development of students. Public policy and education literature argues that incentive-based pay for teachers encourages instructors to focus on test-taking skills and basics without developing the critical and analytical skills of students. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an analysis of the power of political images and policy narratives. I argue that the debate over desegregation policies in Los Angeles, California in the 1970s established two dominant policy images about the purposes of public schools: They are meant to promote both academic achievement and racial equality. Each of these images included several policy narratives to support it. Over the next two decades, these images remained. Eventually, however, one became more dominant over the other. As the district moved away from desegregation, the image of schools as promoters of equality diminished, and the academic achievement image took precedence. This was true for several district policies, including policies that originated as part of the desegregation plan. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines member behavior in the 108th session of the House of Representatives on immigration and education bills to assess whether Latino members offer a greater degree of representation for Latinos than non-Latino members. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exaimines the impact of education on the attitudes of Latinos and non-Latinos concerning immigration policy. The paper finds a convergence in support for a liberalized immigration policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of CNS’s nonproliferation education programs, the Critical Issues Forum (CIF), is designed to involve high school students and teachers in issues of proliferation and control of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The CIF curriculum engages high school students in authentic research on real topics of national and international importance, providing instruction in and guidance on research methodologies. The curriculum is built around benchmarksâ€" broad statements of what CIF program coordinators and high school teachers would like the students to learn. The benchmarks engage learners in research, critical thinking, communication, and making connections. The benchmarks also provide an assessment tool for both program coordinators and the classroom teachers.While emphasis is given to the importance of nonproliferation and disarmament education in a 2002 United Nations Study on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Education, most high school students remain poorly informed on these topics. The UN study specifically endorsed the CNS approach to nonproliferation education: “Teach students how to think, not what to think.” This paper discusses the impact of nonproliferation education for high school students, challenges encountered in the CIF program, and how nonproliferation education aimed at the younger generation can more widely influence security issues. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For years, recent college graduates serving as Army officers have been leading tasks with strategic influence in some of the most challenging environments imaginable. While its technological superiority and professionalism make the U.S. Army the greatest the world has ever known, this does not necessarily translate into success in many of the missions the country continues to ask of its military today. In 2005, the U.S. Military Academy started a course entitled "Winning the Peace" to better educate its future Army officers about just some of the complex challenges of winning the peace throughout the world. Subject matter experts from across the Academy, U.S. and other governments, and private organizations present topics as diverse as security, economics, law, culture, negotiations, ethics, working with other U.S. government agencies, coalition partners, and private security contractors. We also spend three days and two nights in a multi-cultural, multi-religious U.S. city to allow the cadets to experience how people of different backgrounds and beliefs can co-exist peacefully with deliberate effort among the formal and informal leaders. In this paper, I discuss the "Winning the Peace" course design, goals, and structure to explain both the process and substance of the course. I conclude by arguing that this multi-disciplinary education is needed and possible to help future leaders within all professions be better prepared for the enormous complexities involved in winning the peace, not just at the Academy but also at universities across the country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines why state and local governments have implemented No Child Left Behind so quickly and completely even though they have significant reservations with the law. Its primary finding is that they have complied because of fears of losing federal education funding, even though the total funding at risk for noncompliance represents only between 2 and 8 percent of the total education funding in the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines homogeneity and heterogeneity in preferences for public policy, across income and education levels and party identification, and across policy domains in the US, UK and Canada. Do preferences differ across segments of the public at particular points in time? What about over time - do we observe a uniform swing across different groups (parallel publics), or does the flow of opinion differ across party, income, and education? Our data on public preferences for government spending show cross-sectional heterogeneity across sub-aggregates, but very high levels of over-time homogeneity in trends across subgroups. The structure of preference change across subgroups is fairly similar; most notably, thermostatic responsiveness to policy holds generally across the subgroups. This is especially true for broad domestic aggregates of opinion and policy. There still are some differences in feedback, particularly across education levels, as the highly educated are significantly more responsive to spending change over time. People with low and middling levels of education still do change their preferences for spending in response to what policymakers do, just to a lesser extent, at least in certain policy domains. This fits with the large and growing literature that demonstrates real differences owing to information levels. There also are significant differences across partisan subgroupings in various domains. The implications of these findings are considered in the concluding section. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines New Jersey's experiences with implementing No Child Left Behind to better illuminate the impact that the law is having on education reform in the state. The implementation of NCLB has been decidedly mixed as the state has struggled to comply with the law while preserving its robust tradition of local control of schools. The NJDOE initially failed to provide clear and timely AYP determinations or adequate guidance and supervision regarding NCLB's sanctions and remedies for underperforming schools. The unusually small size of districts in NJ has combined with the lack of an inter-district choice law and a difficult charter conversion process to make school choice virtually non-existent in the state. Districts and schools have used their considerable discretion over the SES process to constrain the entrance and expansion of private SES providers and the utilization of these services by students. The NJDOE has provided unprecedented guidance to failing schools and districts but whether or not the CAPA process will generate substantial and lasting student achievement gains remains to be seen. Thanks to NCLB, equity has now been joined with accountability in New Jersey, but it appears that the state must increase its oversight further to ensure that schools are effectively deploying their resources to enhance student achievement and educational opportunity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than a decade, advocates across the United States have pressed for universal access to high quality preschool. Although policy evaluation of such programs has been overwhelmingly favorable about both their cost effectiveness and the educational impact, advocates= influence on policies at the state level has been decidedly mixed. Almost surprisingly, the states that have led the way with generous and innovative programs are generally not those who are usual policy innovators nor those who have particularly well funded or inclusive public school programs at any other level. Moreover, although more than two thirds of US states have some kind of preschool program, these programs vary tremendously in terms of their universality, their standards for quality, and even the locus of their administration. In this paper, we explain the influence of state level variables as well as advocates= political strategies on the resulting policies. After a brief review of the origins of the press for universal pre kindergarten, we describe the range of programs across the states, paying particular attention to successful campaigns for new programs in Georgia, Oklahoma, and Florida. We then provide an overview of advocacy strategies advocates have employed across the United States, emphasizing differences in the nature of the preferred program, the social construction of the target population, and political advocacy strategy. Using a combination of comparative analyses across the 50 states and detailed case studies in a few critical states, we present several distinct pathways to educational reform. Controlling for demographic and budgetary variables at the state level, we assess the impact of different political strategies on the ultimate policy outcomes. Paradoxically, we find that elite oriented strategies produce more comprehensive and generous programs than ones that emphasize democratic politics. We discuss why, and conclude with advice for advocates. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is my main thesis (and many colleagues who share few opinions with me would agree) that the stubborn persistence of political theory teaching within political science departments and especially the representation and recognition of this activity in other key sites within the field--activities largely indifferent or even hostile to the refractive resources of the aspiring political science discipline--is a prime source of the intermittent disruptions that hamper the development of political science as a discipline. This is a good thing. The paper draws on recent studies of the place of Political Theory in the American Political Science Review during the decade of Harvey C. Mansfield's editorship, as well as on Franz L. Neumann's project of a convergence beyween "empirical political science" and "political theory." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though K-12 education policy has become an increasingly salient topic in the United States, few individuals understand the diverse arrangements states have devised to govern America's schools. Describing that variability and then using it to explain student academic success and state policy production is this paper's empirical goal. That focus provides a new test of institutional theories of executive power in policy networks, which predict that more powerful executives in less fragmented networks are likely to produce desirable outputs and outcomes. The results strongly suggest that states perform better when governors are empowered to appoint leaders of state education agencies, but that performance wanes if governors can appoint agency leaders and members of state education boards. The results are more mixed regarding education finances, where fragmentation has inconsistent impacts on student academic success, but does appear to attenuate effective policy production. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines homogeneity and heterogeneity in preferences for public policy, across income and education levels, and party identification, and across policy domains in the US, UK and Canada. Do preferences differ across segments of the public at particular points in time? What about over time - do we observe a uniform swing across different groups (parallel publics), or does the flow of opinion differ across party, income, and education? Our data on public preferences for government spending show systematic cross-sectional differences across sub-aggregates, but a fair degree of homogeneity in trends over time. Some longitudinal heterogeneity does exist, however, and we exploit these differences in dynamic models of the effects of public preferences - across income levels - on government spending in the US and Canada. Results point to some interesting, seemingly important differences in the representation of income groups across policy domains and countries. Perhaps most importantly, in contrast with the existing literature, we find that policymakers do not consistently follow the preferences of wealthiest citizens. If anything, the preferences of the middle class matter most, though there are differences across policy domains. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists know that education, gender, income, age and race matter for public opinion and behavior. But these are more than characteristics of individuals; they are features of groups too. This paper argues that the growing interest in citizen deliberation is an opportunity to revive the study of groups. I analyze data on over 400 groups from a study of jury-eligible Arizona citizens reaching decisions about punitive damages against large corporations. I first establish that these decisions resemble the ones people make about the politics of redistribution, which allows the findings to generalize to the study of public opinion. I then analyze decisions at both the individual and group level and find that the group's demographic composition can be at least as potent as the individual's demographics. The experience of deliberating among many women or people of color can matter far beyond the experience of being a woman or person of color. The implications of this group influence extend to our understanding of deliberation, social cleavages, and the contextual dynamics of public opinion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the state of education worldwide is presented. It identifies the elements that constitute a good U.S. university. It describes the author's experience at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. It shows that research universities, liberal arts institutions, state colleges, and community colleges in the U.S., as well as the higher educational institutions throughout the world, share the same purpose.

A conference paper about the perceptions of racial discrimination in the U.S. is presented. It describes the racial discrimination experienced by African Americans in the areas of employment and education. It explores the broader structure of white racial opinion to understand the racial nature of perceived discrimination. It discusses the three components of attitudinal structure, denial of racial discrimination, black motivation, and overt prejudice.

A conference paper about the influence of the U.S. economic issues on the outcome of the 2004 election is presented. It analyzes the common notion that economic issues benefit Democrats. It examines why surveys taken at various points over time show that the public trust Democrats more than Republicans on Social Security, Medicare, education, health care, and assisting the poor. It presents the quarterly measure of the extent to which economic perceptions help or hurt the Republicans vis-à-vis the Democrats.

The findings of this paper challenge the conventional wisdom of past research: socio-economic inequalities in voter turnout are no longer unique to the United States, rather these biases pervade post-industrial democracies. This research draws on individual national election study series and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems to examine both cross-temporal and cross-national differences in the relationship between voluntary organization membership, socio-economic characteristics, and voter participation. The results reveal that formal organizations such as unions and religious organizations still mobilize their members to vote. Thus, the greatest drop-off in turnout has been among non-members. However, the memberships of formal organizations are generally declining in their share of the population, and these analyses reveal that unions are increasingly comprised of those with greater educational and income resources. In addition, the findings suggest that the changing social distribution among union members is linked to rising inequality among voters. Trade unions no longer appear to be the class-based equalizers they once were, but rather reinforce existing disparities in voter turnout. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central puzzle of the paper is why did the suburban schools systems in Fairfax and Montgomery counties choose to implement policies shifting resources to schools with greater numbers of racial and ethnic minorities at a time of shrinking budgets, when in all likelihood this would alienate their middle-class constituencies? Moreover, why did they choose these policies when they were not under any political pressure to do so? The choice of policy seems to run counter to any interest-based theory of politics. The research presented here finds that bureaucracies have their own internal norms or professional ethos which may lead bureaucrats to espouse policy change preceding any external political pressure; indeed, these bureaucrats may try and mobilize pressure for policy change themselves. Thus, a kind of ?bureaucratic incorporation? of newcomers can take place, driven by professional norms and ethos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recent debates over the University of Michigan’s use of race in admission decisions, much speculation has been made over how affirmative action affects minority undergraduate enrollments. This paper uses a rational choice framework to test the conventional wisdom about the effect of race-based admissions, focusing on the previous landmark judicial decision, Hopwood, along with California’s Proposition 209. This study offers a more rigorous test and more generalizable findings by incorporating all public universities that were bound under Hopwood and Proposition 209, using data that spans 1990-2000. Findings indicate that the effect of including race into admission standards is not the effect that many have predicted. Instead, shifts in minority enrollments that are attributable to affirmative action hinge on university-specific characteristics - namely, the level of selectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies show persistently low or declining levels of political interest and involvement among young Americans, including college students and recent graduates. But there is almost no large-scale research on what kinds of experiences and processes can help promote greater high-quality political participation across a diverse range of undergraduates, including those from groups that tend to participate less, and little is known about whether educational interventions can be effective. There remains pressing need for study of specific practices that show promise for addressing political disengagement (American Political Science Association, 1999). We need to better understand and measure political interest and behavior in a diverse range of undergraduates, as well as to better understand and measure some of the processes and practices that can promote responsible democratic citizenship across the full spectrum of students. This set of problems animates the Political Engagement Project, the first large-scale effort to study the influence of political engagement interventions on college students. The Project is a multi-dimensional study of political engagement in more than 1000 college students from more than sixty American campuses participating in twenty-one different course and program interventions that include a focus on promoting democratic involvement. Part I of this paper explains the general theoretical scaffold of the project, Part II explains the conceptual and measurement frameworks for the survey, and Part III shares the first set of results from innovative pre-/post- surveys used in the Project. In the preliminary set of findings shared in Part III, paired-sample t-tests show significant increases in many key dimensions of political engagement among an initial matched sample of 384 students participating in eighteen different courses and program interventions. These results suggest that although there is much variation across interventions and across students, carefully-designed college courses and programs can have significant effects on all four constituent elements of political engagement, including political knowledge, values, skills, and behaviors. Significant increases occurred in many critical factors of political engagement, including a politically engaged identity, or one?s sense of self as person who is concerned about political issues and government policies and is politically involved; internal and external political efficacy, or the belief that what one thinks and does politically matters and that the political system is at least somewhat open to change; the set of analytic, communication, deliberation, leadership, and political action skills that support effective involvement in diverse political arenas; and a range of actual political behaviors and future commitments to political action. Our initial data analysis also provides baseline information about the nature of students? learning experiences in these courses and programs, and suggests relationships between specific teaching approaches and practices and students? political development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How, precisely, does governance matter for the production of state education policy? In this paper I explore that question using the analytical framework described in Lynn, Heinrich, and Hill (2000; 2001) and Hill (2004). Specifically, I study how variation in state governing arrangements and other relevant factors influence the quality of state policies in two important areas: standards and accountability, and teachers. The analysis relies on a panel dataset of the American states from 1997-2004. Overall, I argue that the institutional links between governors, state boards, and chief state school officers, the fiscal federalism of education, and state political environments noticeably influence the quality of state policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses state public opinion data to explore if and how attitudes about localism affects people’s evaluations of equity-minded school finance reform. The results show that people value localism for its ability to isolate their resources from the problems of poor school districts. Measured in this way, localism is a significant predictor of opposition to finance reform. Commitment to the democratic goods local government provides is not a significant predictor of such opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tensions between two rather contradictory views of higher education in the United States have increased over the past 30 years. The first emphasizes the traditional notion that the American academy consists of a community of scholars, who, supported by public and private endowments and shielded from severe economic vicissitudes, endeavor to order, expand and pass on knowledge that ultimately will benefit society. In this view, most American universities center upon their colleges of liberal arts and sciences, places where students and faculty not only learn together but also reflect philosophically upon how their knowledge affects the broader society. The second emphasizes practical aspects of higher education. It views these institutions as profitable markets for private suppliers of goods and services and as efficient training grounds for supplying intelligent malleable workers to private and public employers. American universities sell knowledge and credentials to diverse customers: not only students, but also private and public institutions that expect to profit from their investments of tuition, contracts or grants. This paper argues that the practical view has risen to prominence, and that in combination with new instructional technologies, it threatens to overwhelm the traditional view. If this argument proves correct, profound changes will occur. Faculties will be downsized as universities outsource instructional services; well-trained graduate students and part-time instructors will administer prepackaged courses; and considerably more instruction will take place from distant locations in real time, and also asynchronously. Tenured faculty as we know them will become rarities as universities adopt more flexible labor practices in a businesslike response to worldwide market forces. On a broader scale democracy will suffer if the idea of university graduates becoming responsible civic leaders is lost. If higher education?s central mission is to provide citizens with the skills to thrive in the market economy, then why should the university graduates concern themselves with public policy and civic affairs? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an undergraduate travel course that teaches students about federal welfare, low-income housing and homeless assistance programs. The rationale and format are described, and some practical advice is offered on how to plan and execute the course. The course brings together students and policy experts involved in federal welfare and housing programs through a series of briefings and site visits in Washington, DC, and Chicago. Students have the opportunity to question those who are involved in shaping those policies at the federal level as well as to talk to officials involved in implementing them at the local level. Students also have ample opportunity to experience some of the difficulties faced by those living on welfare and who are either homeless or who live in public housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars theorize that social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups. Robert Putnam claims to have found support for this theory in his studies of Italy and the United States. In each case he concludes that the presence of social capital - generalized norms of trust and reciprocity - is sufficient to predict progress on a variety of social indicators. Using demographic and public opinion data collected at the state level in the U.S, Putnam links the performance of schools to his measure of social capital. Schools perform best where social capital is found in greater abundance. This paper attempts to replicate Putnam’s finding using data from local communities in North Carolina. Since social contacts and social capital occur at the local level between individuals and groups in a community, a logical extension of Putnam’s work is to verify that these relationships exist locally. I propose and test the following two hypotheses using data from the 100 counties of North Carolina: 1) Students score higher on statewide tests in school districts where social contact is greater among residents; 2) Students drop out of school at lower rates in school districts where social contact is greater among residents. If local evidence exists to support the claim that social contacts matter, then what programs governments fund in the name of social progress may need to be reconsidered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federal education politics have been peculiar during the past twelve years. There was a sudden and unexpected consensus- congressmen and presidents held that students in America’s public schools were learning less than they should. Moreover, the left and the right agreed that the proper policy response to this public problem was to raise education standards. Accordingly, recent years brought five major federal policy initiatives to raise education standards: America 2000, Goals 2000, the 1994 Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Voluntary National Tests (VNT’s), and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB). Yet, for all the effort the policies have failed. America 2000 and VNT’s did not pass Congress; and Goals 2000, the 1994 Reauthorization of the ESEA, and NCLB have had negligible effects on standards. Research Question: Why have the efforts to make federal policy to raise education standards failed? Hypothesis: National politicians do not object to standards per se. In fact, they avidly support standards. However, a deep-rooted political division has confounded the efforts to create effective national standards policy. The sources of the present political divide in federal education politics are twofold. First, the tradition of local control of schooling limited the politically feasible extents of raising educational standards through federal policy. In short, conservatives have denied the federal government direct means for raising standards, forcing policymakers to use indirect and ineffective approaches. Second, liberals believe that academic under-achievement is largely a function of school funding. They have, therefore, refused to accept higher standards without federal action to equalize school funding and resources. Doing this though, would not only be expensive, but it would also be a dramatic invasion of local control, which, as noted above, conservatives stand firmly against. Source Materials: This paper draws on a larger study that utilized primary source documents, including transcripts of congressional hearings on education bills and floor debates, the presidential platforms of the major parties, and interviews with policymakers. These were supplemented with secondary sources (newspapers, Congressional Quarterly, National Journal, texts, etc.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With federal funds accounting for only seven percent of public elementary and secondary education revenue, funding responsibility for K-12 education is split primarily between state and local governments. Since the 1980s, state governments have generally assumed primary fiscal responsibility, with local governments supplying the rest of the necessary revenue (Wong 1999). There is, however, noticeable variation in the level of funding responsibility across the fifty states. This paper performs an empirical examination of the effects of this variation in state funding responsibility for K-12 education, considering the impact of this variation on equity and innovation. We also pay attention to the state-house political party dynamics that may play a mediating role in this relationship, and we consider the effect of funding responsibility on achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and policy makers in the U.S. have long been concerned about achievement gaps between ethnic minorities and white students. The notorious black-white test score gap of a full standard deviation has received special attention (Jencks and Phillips 1998). Although the consensus is strong that such gaps exist and ought to be significantly narrowed if not eliminated, there is little agreement regarding which public policies are likely to be most effective in closing minority student achievement gaps.     In this paper we examine the question of what policy-influenced characteristics of teachers appear to hold the most promise to boost achievement among various disadvantaged groups and whether such achievement gains are likely to come at the expense of other subgroups of students. We pay especially close attention to the question of teacher race and ethnicity and explore what implications teacher race has for the academic achievement of various student groups. We are particularly interested in exploring whether or not teachers of minority races boost the achievement of students of their race, thus demonstrating a [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]