James Catterall and Richard Chapleau, National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
December 2001
In yet another "occasional paper" (#42) from the Teachers College center on education privatization, UCLA professor James Catterall and Richard Chapleau of Chapman University analyze voting patterns in the celebrated California voucher referendum of November 2000. Everybody knows that the measure was thrashed. The authors here try to examine who voted for and against it and why. Note, though, that their analysis is limited to Los Angeles County (about 28 percent of the state population), where Proposition 38 had even less support than statewide (26.9 percent of those voting versus 29.4 percent). Los Angeles also has distinctive demographics and its own raft of education problems (and reform initiatives). The authors do not try to make it representative of California as a whole. Neither should readers of this paper. The (highly technical) analysis also suffers from a number of data limitations and analytic problems. The findings, therefore, should probably just be seen as suggestive. Still, some of them are interesting, if rather predictable. It appears that relatively wealthier voters were more apt to favor vouchers and lower income voters were likelier to oppose them. Republicans were also more pro-voucher than Democrats. Those with children already in private schools were more pro-voucher than those with kids in public schools. Nobody, it seems, had much information about what vouchers are. So people were voting-as no doubt they usually do-more on the basis of ideology or perceived self-interest than cool, rational analysis of information. Note, too, that better-informed people (at least in their own view) were also slightly likelier to favor vouchers. Readers of this study might also want to acquaint themselves with Terry Moe's excellent book-titled Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public-on the complex attitudes that Americans have with respect to school choice. To locate the Moe book, surf to http://www.brook.edu/press/books/schools_vouchers.htm. To see the NCSPE paper, surf to http://www.ncspe.org, where you can view a PDF or request an emailed copy.
