We examine whether policies that enable families to opt out of locally provided public services are associated with reduced political participation. Our study is focused on two types of school choice policy in Michigan: inter-district choice and charter schools. Do parents who send their children to schools of choice or charter schools vote at…

Education researchers and political scientists have long raised theoretical objections to market-based reforms like school choice on the grounds that these policies may undermine public participation in democratic politics and erode public support for public institutions like schools. Little work, however, has empirically tested this claim.…

Recent decades have witnessed a proliferation of nationally organized school reform interest groups like StudentsFirst. While historically active at the state and federal levels, these organizations are increasingly involving themselves in local school board elections by recruiting candidates, making donations, and offering policy advice. However,…

This article reports that a state ballot measure to ban affirmative-action programs based on race, gender, and national origin at public colleges and other state agencies was defeated. Colorado voters narrowly rejected such a referendum last week by a razor-thin margin that took two days to become official. Voters in Nebraska, however, took the…

An aspect of the Lansing, Michigan desegregation process that is examined in this paper is the school elections which have been held since 1969. The purpose of this examination is to determine what, if any, reliable voting patterns can be found in the Lansing community relative to the desegregation process. The assumption underlying this analysis…