The Ballot or the School: An Investigation of Affect Voter Turnout on Academic Achievement in California
Posted: 3 Nov 2013
Date Written: November 1, 2013
Abstract
While social scientists have paid attention to the correlation between voter turnout and education as a proxy for civic norms, this project examines the way in which voter turnout affects school achievement in order to measure the effect of social capital. More specifically, this study investigates the impact of social capital for African American and Hispanic communities in California. Using turnout as a proxy for political participation, this exploration of social capital operates as a test of democracy. Higher levels of civic engagement should produce better, more effective schools for every community regardless of its racial composition. However, my results suggest that, for African Americans and Latinos in California, democratic citizen performance in the form of voting does not carry the same ability to improve schools in parts of the state at which black and brown people most heavily reside. Such a null finding for communities of color carries tremendous implications for a shortcoming of American democracy.
Keywords: politics,education, turnout, achievement
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