Politics of State-Led Reform in Education: Market Competition and Electoral Dynamics

Abstract

State-led educational initiatives have gained prominence across the nation. In this study, the authors examine two very different types of reform-state adoption of charter school legislation and state implementation of school district take-over-to explore the proposition that the type of education reform a state chooses will be significantly affected by a state's electoral dynamics, that is, the extent to which there is political competition or party dominance in a given state. The authors examine charter schools and school district takeover with the expectation that the factors leading to charter schools in a state will be different than the political climate in which takeover reform is realized. To test various hypotheses on the role of electoral dynamics in state-led reform, the authors use an event history analysis using pooled cross-sectional time-series and a traditional cross-sectional model using ordinary least square regression techniques.