Improving verbal learning in schools can increase political engagement and encourage voting later in life.

Can education policymakers close achievements gaps in core subjects, and at the same time improve civic education and participation? In new research, Meghan Condon argues that they can; students who gain greater verbal skills in school, and who then do better academically, are also more likely to vote and volunteer as adults. She argues that students who are from disadvantaged social backgrounds get fewer verbal learning opportunities in school, which in turn further hurts their chances of being represented in the political process

Immigrant Inclusion in the Safety Net: A Framework for Analysis and Effects on Educational Attainment

Across states, there is substantial variation in the degree to which immigrants and their children are offered public assistance. We present a theoretical framework for analyzing the effects of policy decisions about immigrant inclusion. We apply the framework to investigate the effect of the state safety net on educational attainment. We focus on the years following welfare reform in 1996, when states gained considerable autonomy over welfare policy, including decisions about the eligibility of immigrant residents. Leveraging state-level data from before and after reform, we estimate a difference-in-difference model to identify the effect of variation in immigrant inclusivity on educational attainment. We find that when states broaden the inclusivity of the social safety net to immigrants, young Latinos are more likely to graduate from high school. This effect is present beyond the group of Latino residents who receive additional benefits, suggesting that policy decisions about immigrants spill over to broader communities and communicate broader messages about social inclusion to racial and ethnic groups. We find similar patterns among Asian youth, but not among black and non-Hispanic white youth. We conclude that immigrant inclusion has consequences for the life prospects of the growing population of youth in high-immigrant ethnic groups

The Effects of Partisan Framing on COVID-19 Attitudes: Experimental Evidence from Early and Late Pandemic

Political polarization has dominated news coverage of Americans’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this research note, we report findings from two experimental studies, in which we present respondents with news stories about COVID-19 mitigation measures that emphasize partisan difference or accord. The stories present the same numeric facts about public opinion, but highlight either the partisan gap that existed at the time of the study, or the fact that large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats supported the measures at the time. Results from our first study, conducted late April 2020, show that a media frame drawing attention to shared concern across party lines produced a less polarized response to social-distancing restrictions than a frame that drew attention to partisan difference. Our findings suggest that the extensive media coverage about the red-blue divide in COVID-19 opinions reinforced partisan polarization. These results, however, did not replicate in a second study conducted much later in the pandemic. Qualitative data collected across the two studies demonstrate the degree to which polarization had rapidly become a dominant narrative in Americans’ thinking about COVID-19

Excluding Latino immigrant families from the social safety net hurts their children’s educational outcomes – and effects spill over onto Latino children who are not excluded

Recent years have seen growing discussion in media, academic, and policy circles about the problems of inequality in America. What often does not get a great deal of attention is that inequality among families with children has grown much faster than inequality overall. In new research Meghan Condon, Alexandra Filindra, and Amber Wichowsky look at how being excluded from social safety nets affects low-income Latino children. They find that not only does such exclusion lead to poorer educational outcomes for these children, these effects actually spill over within immigrant communities and affect children who have not lost eligibility for benefits

The MPCP Longitudinal Educational Growth Study Third Year Report

This is the third-year report in a five-year evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). The MPCP, which began in 1990, provides government-funded vouchers for low-income children to attend private schools in the City of Milwaukee. The maximum voucher amount in 2008-09 was $6,607, and approximately 20,000 children used a voucher to attend either secular or religious private schools. The MPCP is the oldest and largest urban school voucher program in the United States. This evaluation was authorized by Wisconsin Act 125 enacted in 2005

Models of classroom assessment for course-based research experiences

Course-based research pedagogy involves positioning students as contributors to authentic research projects as part of an engaging educational experience that promotes their learning and persistence in science. To develop a model for assessing and grading students engaged in this type of learning experience, the assessment aims and practices of a community of experienced course-based research instructors were collected and analyzed. This approach defines four aims of course-based research assessment—(1) Assessing Laboratory Work and Scientific Thinking; (2) Evaluating Mastery of Concepts, Quantitative Thinking and Skills; (3) Appraising Forms of Scientific Communication; and (4) Metacognition of Learning—along with a set of practices for each aim. These aims and practices of assessment were then integrated with previously developed models of course-based research instruction to reveal an assessment program in which instructors provide extensive feedback to support productive student engagement in research while grading those aspects of research that are necessary for the student to succeed. Assessment conducted in this way delicately balances the need to facilitate students’ ongoing research with the requirement of a final grade without undercutting the important aims of a CRE education

Bringing LGBTQ Advocacy into the Classroom: Bridging the Gap Between Policy and Practice

This study focuses on encouraging anti-homophobia education in schools, specifically in regards to fostering safer school environments and bringing LGBTQ advocacy and perspectives into the secondary school classroom. Particular attention was paid to current dialogue around traditional gender binaries and how concerned educators can combat these troubling stereotypes. The questions guiding this study were in what ways does working with a Gay-Straight Alliance inform the practices of four Ontario Secondary School teachers' regarding anti-homophobia education? And what efforts are being made to reach to male students regarding anti-homophobia education? Four participants were interviews for this qualitative study, all of who are dedicated and passionate teachers working in the Greater Toronto Area to combat homophobia. Data analysis as well as the relevant literature revealed that fostering safe school environments for LGBTQ youth is a complex process and the individual teacher can have a detrimental role (either positive or negative) in contributing to feelings of safety within a school. Findings also indicated that a serious disconnect exists between current anti-homophobia policies and the practices occurring in schools. This study strives to raise awareness about this divide and to educate teachers regarding the steps they can take to bridge this gap in their classrooms

The Economic Other: Inequality in the American Political Imagination

Economic inequality is at a record high in the United States, but public demand for redistribution is not rising with it. Meghan Condon and Amber Wichowsky show that this paradox and other mysteries about class and US politics can be solved through a focus on social comparison. Powerful currents compete to propel attention up or down—toward the rich or the poor—pulling politics along in the wake.Through an astute blend of experiments, surveys, and descriptions people offer in their own words, The Economic Other reveals that when less-advantaged Americans compare with the rich, they become more accurate about their own status and want more from government. But American society is structured to prevent upward comparison. In an increasingly divided, anxious nation, opportunities to interact with the country’s richest are shrinking, and people prefer to compare to those below to feel secure. Even when comparison with the rich does occur, many lose confidence in their power to effect change. Laying bare how social comparisons drive political attitudes, The Economic Other is an essential look at the stubborn plight of inequality and the measures needed to solve it.https://ecommons.luc.edu/facultybooks/1174/thumbnail.jp

Inequality in the Social Mind: Social Comparison and Support for Redistribution

Income inequality is fundamentally relational in nature, but research on the American public’s response to it tends to examine individuals in isolation, concluding that support for redistribution is unresponsive to inequality. We focus instead on perceptions of relative socioeconomic position, which we manipulate experimentally through imagined social interactions with high- or low-status others. We find that subjects who make social comparisons between themselves and someone who is socioeconomically advantaged perceive their own status as lower, assess their own socioeconomic status more accurately, and become more supportive of social welfare spending, even though we provide no factual information about the income distribution to subjects in the experiment. Our findings demonstrate that Americans respond with support for redistribution when conditions facilitate upward social comparison. We argue for a shift in scholarly attention to the structural factors that keep rising upper-tail inequality socially invisible

Economic Anxiety Among Contingent Survey Workers

Psychologists and other social scientists increasingly conduct experiments with online convenience samples from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Marketplace (MTurk). MTurk and population-based samples differ in well-documented ways, but whether or not compositional differences are problematic for experiments remains controversial. We highlight a critically important characteristic that is likely to interact with many experimental treatments in the psychological and behavioral sciences, and that has not been identified by other studies of MTurk samples: economic anxiety. We document a sizable difference between contingent survey workers and the general population and explain the ways in which economic anxiety is likely to interact with experimental treatments. In an era of rapidly growing economic anxiety and group disparities in economic wellbeing, awareness of this compositional difference is essential, especially in cases where experimental stimuli may interact with economic anxiety