While equal political participation is a fundamental democratic ideal, it is an ideal unrealized in the United States. Those with more—more education, more money, more time, more skills—participate more. Those who have less—especially the poor and minorities—participate less and may be absent from the process altogether. A similar statement could be made about academic achievement. Those with more—better teachers, schools, neighborhoods, and peers—perform better on achievement tests. Those who typically have less—the poor and minorities—do not perform as well on standardized tests. > In this dissertation, I conduct three quasi-experiments using nationally representative and population-level data that identify how politics affects education and student achievement, and how education affects political behavior. Specifically, I examine whether exposure to political advertising that portrays President Obama as a role model decreases African American underperformance on standardized exams; whether the experience of an election affects civic classroom practice, student achievement, and political behavior; and whether going to Head Start causes political behavior in adulthood. I find that African American male students with a prior record of achievement and who attend a school with an at least 50% African American contexts performed better on the reading end-of-grade exam when exposed to positive Obama advertising. I find that exposure to the 2008 presidential general election causes an increase in observed election-oriented classroom practices. I find that students who took a regular civics and Economics course lost .33 points on the end-of-course exam. I find that taking an advanced civics and Economics class caused a 3% increase for all students and an 8.5% increase for African American students taking up community service, politics/student government, or debate as an extracurricular activity in the second half of high school. I find that Head Start does not affect political behavior for all attendees, but that there is a distributional effect—Hispanic students and children of mothers who did not complete high school are more attentive to politics in adulthood. This effect is mediated by the immediate boost to cognitive and social skill posttreatment and not by high school completion.

Last modified

• 04/19/2018

Creator

• Lauren Lowenstein Bauer

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2FT3Z

Subject

• Human Development and Social Policy

Keyword

• civic, education, Head Start, Obama, policy, political behavior

Date created

• 2016-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright