Abstract
Education researchers and political scientists have long raised theoretical objections to market-based reforms like school choice on the grounds that these policies may undermine public participation in democratic politics and erode public support for public institutions like schools. Little work, however, has empirically tested this claim. Drawing on a unique dataset of 191 off-cycle school bond elections in Michigan school districts between 2005 and 2017, this paper employs regression modeling to test whether voter turnout and school bond passage rates are lower in districts where school choice exit participation is high. Results show that a 1 percentage point increase in a district’s school choice participation rate is associated with a 1% decline in voter turnout in that district’s school bond elections. This result is statistically significant even when controlling for other community and election characteristics associated with voter turnout. However, differential relationships are revealed for exit via charter schools and exit via interdistrict public school choice. The data do not reveal a significant relationship between school choice and the odds of bond passage on election day.
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