Education Reform from the Grassroots How and When Parents Can Shape Policy Michael Hartney July 2014 AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE Foreword heavily state and local affair, education politics is challenges, or the lessons they are learning about mobi- A a unique area of American civic life. Entrenched lizing parents in search of policy change. AEI Education interest groups tend to have an outsized impact on has been at the forefront of efforts to better understand mayoral races and school board elections, which this new phenomenon. endows them with substantial control over what hap- Two years ago I, along with Drew University polit- pens in schools and classrooms. And these elections are ical scientist Patrick McGuinn, released one of the often less competitive and suffer from low rates of voter first in-depth looks at parent organizing for edu- turnout. For school reformers seeking to improve the cation reform in Parent Power: Grass-Roots Activ- status quo by promoting standards and accountability, ism and K–12 Education Reform. We found, among teacher effectiveness, or school choice policies, these other things, that while parents who sent their chil- political dynamics paint a bleak picture: powerful inter- dren to schools of choice were ripe for mobilization, ests dominate local elections, and local elections dictate the mere act of choosing a school did not by itself the direction of school policy. make parents activists. Rather, ERAOs had to work Education reformers have long recognized these to equip parents with the necessary tools and training structural obstacles to change and have made real prog- to effectively lobby policymakers. We also found that ress in building the political power necessary to persuade many of the most prominent ERAOs were relatively incumbents and to elect education reform champions young and had limited resources, begging questions at all levels of government. However, the movement of sustainability. has traditionally lacked significant grassroots support But ours was just the first look. To continue learning in the communities those grassroots organizations seek more about ERAOs and parent power, AEI Education to help, leaving the organizations vulnerable to familiar will be releasing a slate of new research distilling les- charges of elitism and corporate reform. sons about what makes for effective recruitment, how But a new set of education reform advocacy orga- groups train and mobilize parents, and how effective nizations (ERAOs) is working to level the grassroots those groups are at sustaining parent engagement over playing field by leveraging the unique position of an time. In this first paper, Michael Hartney, professor of oft- marginalized constituency: public school parents. political science at Lake Forest College, starts with the Over the past few years, these groups have burst onto most fundamental question regarding parent organiz- the scene by credibly organizing and mobilizing parents ing: when and in what contexts can parent organizing to fight for reforms such as school choice, standards and successfully influence public policy? accountability, and teacher tenure reform. The roster of Hartney first summarizes what existing political sci- ERAOs includes groups with national reach—such as ence literature on interest groups and advocacy might Stand for Children (STAND), the Black Alliance for suggest about the potential avenues of influence par- Educational Options (BAEO), Democrats for Educa- ent organizing groups might have—for example, direct tion Reform (DFER), and the 50-State Campaign for lobbying, grassroots organizing, and electioneering— Achievement Now (50-CAN)—and many others with and the conditions under which each approach may local focus. assist ERAO reform efforts the most. Using new data Despite the growing import of ERAOs, to date, from a survey of school board members, Hartney then not much is known about their strategies, successes, assesses how responsive local school board members are i EDUCATION REFORM FROM THE GRASSROOTS MICHAEL HARTNEY to parent demands. The study goes on to zero in on • In local school politics, parent organizing can be STAND, 50-CAN, and DFER and examines several used to identify and support new candidates who real-world examples of ERAO advocacy to provide evi- will run against unsympathetic incumbents, often dence of parent power. Among his findings: in low-turnout primary elections. • In both local and national politics, parent orga- Hartney concludes that the rise of ERAOs and orga- nizing can help guard ERAOs against criticisms nized parent advocacy suggests that “school politics of “Astroturf” lobbying (as opposed to more gen- are increasingly operating like the politics that charac- uine grassroots efforts). terize other policy domains.” As ERAOs continue to grow and adapt in this new political environment, such • School board members are less responsive to par- research will be necessary to track their successes and ent preferences than they are to the preferences of learn from their struggles. professional educators, suggesting a need for the For more information, please contact Hartney kind of organizing that can unite parents and ([email protected]) or myself (andrew.kelly@aei. amplify their voices. org). For additional information on AEI’s education policy studies program, please visit www.aei.org/policy/ • However, parent organizing can help drive pol- education/ or contact Daniel Lautzenheiser at daniel. icy change when combined with elite-level tactics [email protected]. such as campaign donations to preferred can- didates, direct lobbying, and mass media cam- — Andrew P. Kelly paigns. However, parent organizing is unlikely to Resident Scholar, Education Policy Studies substitute for these elite tactics. American Enterprise Institute ii Education Reform from the Grassroots: How and When Parents Can Shape Policy ne of the most influential applications of political parent organizing make a difference in education poli- Oscience to our understanding of US public edu- tics and policymaking? Drawing from political science cation is John Chubb and Terry Moe’s Politics, Markets, research, quantitative and qualitative analyses of real- and America’s Schools. Though best remembered for its world ERAO policy campaigns, and an original survey brazen proclamation that “[school] choice is a pana- experiment, I provide an overview of how grassroots cea,” the book’s most underappreciated insight has little efforts to mobilize parents fit into ERAO efforts to to do with the policy of parental choice and everything change policy. to do with the status of parental voice in K–12 poli- First, I briefly review the objectives, strategies, and tics. Parents, Chubb and Moe reminded us, are a small tactics most frequently employed by these nascent constituency in the larger social and political institution lobby groups.3 Next, I use existing research in political that is public education: science to build a theoretical framework that outlines some conditions under which parent mobilization is The myth that the schools are somehow supposed to more or less likely to enhance ERAO lobbying efforts. be what parents and students want them to be . is The third section of the paper puts this framework to misleading. The proper constituency of even a single the test by examining whether it can tell us anything public school is a huge and heterogeneous one. Par- about ERAO efforts to influence real-world education ents and students are but a small part of this constit- politics and policy. Finally, I conclude by summarizing uency. [They] have a right to participate . but no the main findings and highlighting the strategies that right to win. In the end, they have to take what society ERAO campaigns may benefit from adopting in their gives them.1 lobbying. Recent changes in the education politics landscape are beginning to challenge our assumption that par- ERAO Lobbying Efforts in Education ents are destined to play a passive and peripheral role in school politics. In short, there has been a dramatic Before analyzing the importance of grassroots advocacy reconfiguration in the constellation of interest groups in ERAO lobbying efforts, it is important to outline lobbying policymakers on K–12 issues.2 A new breed what ERAOs are trying to accomplish and where they of education interest groups—education reform advo- are they trying to accomplish it. cacy organizations (ERAOs)—have begun organizing parents as part of their larger efforts to lobby policy- Background on ERAO Activity. To conduct a study makers on a host of school reforms. that was both generalizable and manageable, I limited While some researchers have examined the ori- my analysis to a subset of ERAOs that have chapters gins and policy aims of ERAOs, very little is known focused on reforming school policy within specific about the extent to which grassroots advocacy in gen- states: Stand for Children (STAND), 50-State Cam- eral and parent activism in particular are central to the paign for Achievement Now (50-CAN), and Demo- success of these organizations’ advocacy campaigns. crats for Education Reform (DFER). While there are To fill that void, this paper asks: when and where does other state-specific ERAOs (such as Parent Revolution and Advance Illinois) and other large ERAOs that are Michael Hartney ([email protected]) is assistant profes- sor of politics at Lake Forest College, where his research focuses active across multiple states (such as Students First and on the