Education As The “Silver Bullet”: Bringing Politics Into The Study Of Social Mobility, Redistribution, And Education

ABSTRACT

As conventional forms of wealth redistribution have diminished under the neoliberal consensus of both Democrats and Republicans in the United States, education reform has become a bipartisan issue. Elite rhetoric on education has often focused on it as a “silver bullet” that cures any number of social ills. This logic ties it closely to a number of positive social outcomes like economic and workforce development and crime reduction. We analyze the value of education as a redistributive mechanism, and trace how invoking education as the silver bullet is closely tied to cuts to social spending. Through a paired comparison of two US states: Nevada and New Mexico, we demonstrate that education interventions are most directed at those educational institutions most successful at promoting social mobility, and that “education as the silver bullet” rhetoric is used as a cover for cuts to the broader social safety net.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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² Mazumder, “Fortunate Sons,” 235.

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⁴ “State of the Union Address – February 4, 1997,” available online at: https://clintonwhitehouse2.archives.gov/WH/SOU97/.

⁵ Jason Thompson, “Mobility in the Middle: Bachelor’s Degree Selectivity and the Intergenerational Association in Status in the United States,” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 60 (April 2019): 16–28; Dirk Witteveen and Paul Attewell, “Reconsidering the ‘Meritocratic Power of a College Degree,’” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 66 (April 2020); and Tomoaki Kotera and Ananth Seshadri, “Educational Policy and Intergenerational Mobility,” Review of Economic Dynamics 25 (April 2017): 187–207.

⁶ Bruce D. Baker et al., “School Funding Disparities and the Plight of Latinx Children,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 28, no. 135 (September 14, 2020), https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1267650.

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⁹ Ann Cammett, “Deadbeat Dads & Welfare Queens: How Metaphor Shapes Poverty Law,” Boston College Journal of Law and Social Justice 34 (2014): 34; and Sanford F. Schram, Joe Soss, and Richard C. Fording, Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform, First edition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).

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¹¹ Agustina Giraudy, Eduardo Moncada, and Richard Snyder, Inside Countries: Subnational Research in Comparative Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

¹² Sidney Tarrow, “The Strategy of Paired Comparison: Toward a Theory of Practice,” Comparative Political Studies 43, no. 2 (February 1, 2010): 230–59; Matt Ryan, “The Comparative Method,” in Theory and Methods in Political Science (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); and Arend Lijphart, “Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method,” The American Political Science Review 65, no. 3 (1971): 682–93.

¹³ “Pre-K-12 Rankings: Measuring how well states are preparing students for college” U.S. News and World Report available online at: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education/prek-12.

¹⁴ Yazzie/Martinez v. the State of New Mexico,No. D-101-CV-2014-00793 (1st Judicial District Court Santa Fe County February 14, 2019).

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¹⁶ Much of this tradition of research builds from Edelman’s The Symbolic Uses of Politics, however in analyzing this “substitution” speech we have eschewed the standard dichotomy of symbolic and tangible. Murray J Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985).

¹⁷ Peter Bjerre Mortensen et al., “Comparing Government Agendas: Executive Speeches in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Denmark,” Comparative Political Studies 44, no. 8 (August 1, 2011): 973–1000.

¹⁸ One of the only exceptions is Tomoaki Kotera & Ananth Seshardi’s (2017) excellent study, which offers a subnational comparison at the school-district level of analysis.

¹⁹ Michael Hout, “More Universalism, Less Structural Mobility: The American Occupational Structure in the 1980s,” American Journal of Sociology 93, no. 6 (May 1988): 1358–1400.

²⁰ Hout, “More Universalism,” 1391.

²¹ Fabian T. Pfeffer and Florian R. Hertel, “How Has Educational Expansion Shaped Social Mobility Trends in the United States?,” Social Forces 94, no. 1 (September 2015): 143–80; Dirk Witteveen and Paul Attewell, “The Earnings Payoff from Attending a Selective College,” Social Science Research 66 (August 2017): 154–69; Anna Manzoni and Jessi Streib, “The Equalizing Power of a College Degree for First-Generation College Students: Disparities Across Institutions, Majors, and Achievement Levels,” Research in Higher Education 60, no. 5 (August 2019): 577–605; and Florencia Torche, “Analyses of Intergenerational Mobility: An Interdisciplinary Review,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 657, no. 1 (January 2015): 37–62.

²² Florencia Torche, “Is a College Degree Still the Great Equalizer? Intergenerational Mobility across Levels of Schooling in the United States,” American Journal of Sociology 117, no. 3 (November 2011): 763–807.

²³ Pfeffer and Hertel, “How Has Educational Expansion Shaped Social Mobility Trends in the United States?”

²⁴ Thompson, “Mobility in the Middle.”

²⁵ Emily Beller and Michael Hout, “Intergenerational Social Mobility: The United States in Comparative Perspective,” The Future of Children 16, no. 2 (2006): 19–36.

²⁶ Torche, “Is a College Degree Still the Great Equalizer?”; Pfeffer and Hertel, “How Has Educational Expansion Shaped Social Mobility Trends in the United States?”, 157.

²⁷ Matt S. Giani, “Are All Colleges Equally Equalizing?: How Institutional Selectivity Impacts Socioeconomic Disparities in Graduates’ Labor Outcomes,” The Review of Higher Education 39, no. 3 (2016): 431–61; Nicolai T. Borgen, “College Quality and the Positive Selection Hypothesis: The ‘Second Filter’ on Family Background in High-Paid Jobs,” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 39 (March 2015): 32–47; and Deirdre Bloome, Shauna Dyer, and Xiang Zhou, “Educational Inequality, Educational Expansion, and Intergenerational Income Persistence in the United States,” American Sociological Review 83, no. 6 (December 1, 2018): 1215–53.

²⁸ Witteveen and Attewell, “Reconsidering the ‘Meritocratic Power of a College Degree,’” 11.

²⁹ Xiang Zhou, “Equalization or Selection? Reassessing the ‘Meritocratic Power’ of a College Degree in Intergenerational Income Mobility,” American Sociological Review 84, no. 3 (June 2019): 459–85.

³⁰ Giani, “Are All Colleges Equally Equalizing?”

³¹ Giani, “Are All Colleges Equally Equalizing?”; Witteveen and Attewell, “The Earnings Payoff from Attending a Selective College”; Thompson, “Mobility in the Middle.”

³² Karly Sarita Ford and Jason Thompson, “Inherited Prestige: Intergenerational Access to Selective Universities in the United States,” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 46 (December 2016): 86.

³³ Giani, “Are All Colleges Equally Equalizing?”; Witteveen and Attewell, “The Earnings Payoff from Attending a Selective College”; Manzoni and Streib, “The Equalizing Power of a College Degree for First-Generation College Students.”

³⁴ Miles Corak, “‘Inequality Is the Root of Social Evil,’ or Maybe Not? Two Stories about Inequality and Public Policy,” Canadian Public Policy, November 8, 2016; Lars Lefgren, Frank McIntyre, and David P. Sims, “Beyond Education and Fairness: A Labor Market Taxation Model for the Great Gatsby Curve,” Economic Inquiry 53, no. 2 (April 2015): 962–78.

³⁵ Andrea Ichino, Loukas Karabarbounis, and Enrico Moretti, “The Political Economy of Intergenerational Income Mobility,” Economic Inquiry 49, no. 1 (January 2011): 62–63.

³⁶ Robert H. Haveman and Timothy M. Smeeding, “The Role of Higher Education in Social Mobility,” The Future of Children 16, no. 2 (2006): 125–50; Beller and Hout, “Intergenerational Social Mobility”; and Bloome, Dyer, and Zhou, “Educational Inequality, Educational Expansion, and Intergenerational Income Persistence in the United States”; Zhou, “Equalization or Selection?”

³⁷ Emily Rauscher, “Does Educational Equality Increase Mobility? Exploiting Nineteenth-Century U.S. Compulsory Schooling Laws,” American Journal of Sociology 121, no. 6 (May 2016): 1697–1761.

³⁸ Roland Benabou and Efe Ok, “Social Mobility and the Demand for Redistribution: The Poum Hypothesis,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 116, no. 2 (2001): 447–87.

³⁹ David L. Weakliem and Robert Biggert, “Region and Political Opinion in the Contemporary United States,” Social Forces 77, no. 3 (1999): 863–86.

⁴⁰ Matthew Luttig, “The Structure of Inequality and Americans’ Attitudes toward Redistribution,” Public Opinion Quarterly 77, no. 3 (January 1, 2013): 811–21.

⁴¹ Noam Lupu and Harry Jonas Pontusson, “The Structure of Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution,” American Political Science Review 105, no. 02 (2011): 316–36.

⁴² Luttig, “The Structure of Inequality and Americans’ Attitudes toward Redistribution.”

⁴³ Robert Dur and Coen N. Teulings, “Are Education Subsidies an Efficient Redistributive Device?,” SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, January 1, 2003), Available online at: https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=392360.

⁴⁴ Eric A. Hanushek, “The Failure of Input-Based Schooling Policies,” The Economic Journal 113, no. 485 (2003): F64–98.

⁴⁵ Carmen Bevia and Inigo Iturbe–Ormaetxe, “Redistribution and Subsidies for Higher Education,” Scandinavian Journal of Economics 104, no. 2 (June 1, 2002): 321–40.

⁴⁶ Susan E. Mayer and Leonard M. Lopoo, “Government Spending and Intergenerational Mobility,” Journal of Public Economics 92, no. 1–2 (February 2008): 139–58, 155.

⁴⁷ Emma Brown, “In 23 States, Richer School Districts Get More Local Funding than Poorer Districts,” Washington Post, March 12, 2015, Available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-23-states-richer-school-districts-get-more-local-funding-than-poorer-districts/.

⁴⁸ Kotera and Seshadri, “Educational Policy and Intergenerational Mobility.” 204.

⁴⁹ Cecilia Elena Rouse and Lisa Barrow, “U.S. Elementary and Secondary Schools: Equalizing Opportunity or Replicating the Status Quo?” The Future of Children 16, no. 2 (2006): 99–123.

⁵⁰ Jill Barshay, “In 6 States, School Districts with the Neediest Students Get Less Money than the Wealthiest,” The Hechinger Report, July 9, 2018, https://hechingerreport.org/in-6-states-school-districts-with-the-neediest-students-get-less-money-than-the-wealthiest/.

⁵¹ Haveman and Smeeding, “The Role of Higher Education in Social Mobility.”

⁵² Corak, “‘Inequality Is the Root of Social Evil,’ or Maybe Not?” 95–96.

⁵³ Sommeiller and Price, “The New Gilded Age.”

⁵⁴ Ibid.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ “Economic Mobility of the States,” Pew Charitable Trusts Available online at: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/data-visualizations/2012/economic-mobility-of-the-states.

⁵⁷ “NM Ranks No. 1 in Depending on Federal Government,” Albuquerque Journal, Available online at: https://www.abqjournal.com/1293783/nm-ranks-no-1-in-depending-on-federal-government.html.

⁵⁸ Susana Martinez, “READ: Susana Martinez’s 2017 State of the State Address,” The NM Political Report, January 17, 2017, https://nmpoliticalreport.com/2017/01/17/read-susana-martinezs-2017-state-of-the-state-address/.

⁵⁹ “Text of Gov. Susana Martinez’ State of the State Address,” Clovis News Journal, January 17, 2012, http://www.cnjonline.com.php56-17.ord1-1.websitetestlink.com/2012/01/17/text-of-gov-susana-martinez-state-of-the-state-address/.

⁶⁰ Diane Ravitch, “ALEC Model Legislation for the Third Grad Reading Guarantee,” Diane Ravitch’s Blog Available online at: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/04/23/alec-model-legislation-for-the-third-grade-reading-guarantee/; and “A-Plus Literact Act,” American Legislative Exchange Council Available online at: https://www.alec.org/model-policy/the-a-plus-literacy-act/.

⁶¹ Michael Mitchell and Michael Leachman, “Years of Cuts Threaten to Put College Out of Reach for More Students,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, May 12, 2015, Available online at: https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/years-of-cuts-threaten-to-put-college-out-of-reach-for-more-students.

⁶² “A-Plus Literacy Act” American Legislative Exchange Council, Available online at: https://www.alec.org/model-policy/the-a-plus-literacy-act/.

⁶³ Michael Mitchell, Michael Leachman, and Kathleen Masterson, “A Lost Decade in Higher Education Funding,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Available online at: https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-decade-in-higher-education-funding.

⁶⁴ “Full Text of Sandoval’s Last State of the State Address,” accessed May 16, 2021, https://www.rgj.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/17/full-text-sandovals-last-state-state-address/96703466/.

⁶⁵ For higher education budget data and state social spending (as a proxy for more directly redistributional mechanisms) we use the data set constructed by the Tax Policy Center, Available online at: https://state-local-finance-data.taxpolicycenter.org/pages.cfm. This data is, in turn, derived from the US Census Bureau Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances. For Higher Education we use the series R41 Higher Education Total. Our proxy for more redistributive funding is Public Welfare Cash Assistance Per Capita. This removes the large fluctuations during the years in question brought on by the introduction of the Affordable Care Act and subsequent Medicaid expansion. “State and Local Government Finance Data,” State and Local Government Finance Data, Tax Policy Center, https://state-local-finance-data.taxpolicycenter.org; US Census Bureau, “Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances,” The United States Census Bureau, Available online at: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/gov-finances.html.

⁶⁶ “New Mexico HB2 | 2016 | Regular Session,” LegiScan, 2, Available online at: https://legiscan.com/NM/bill/HB2/2016.

⁶⁷ Mitchell and Leachmand “Years of Cuts Threaten to Put College Out of Reach for More Students”; “New Mexico 34th in Nation for Pupil Spending, Report Says,” Santafenewmexican.Com, 34, Available online at: https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/new-mexico-34th-in-nation-for-pupil-spending-report-says/article_c0735ccf-d428-53cb-9f49-41b032544c3e.html.

⁶⁸ “Fiscal Year 2018 Executive Budget Recommendation,” Available online at: http://www.nmdfa.state.nm.us/uploads/files/SBD/FY18/FISCAL%20YEAR%202018%20EXECUTIVE%20BUDGET%20RECOMMENDATION.pdf.

⁶⁹ David McGrath Schwartz“Sandoval’s Budget Boosts Some Social Services, Falls Short on Others,” January 18, 2013, Available online at: https://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/jan/18/sandovals-budget-boosts-some-social-services-falls/.

⁷⁰ Romand Coles, “Transforming the Game: Democratizing the Publicness of Higher Education and Commonwealth in Neoliberal Times,” New Political Science 36, no. 4 (October 2, 2014): 622–39.

⁷¹ Vincent A. Mahler, David K. Jesuit, and Piotr R. Paradowski, “Electoral Turnout and State Redistribution: A Cross-National Study of Fourteen Developed Countries,” Political Research Quarterly 67, no. 2 (June 2014): 361–73; Matthew Polacko, “Party Positions, Income Inequality, and Voter Turnout in Canada, 1984–2015,” American Behavioral Scientist 64, no. 9 (August 1, 2020): 1324–47.