Local charter school service delivery: The explanatory power of interest groups

Abstract

The primary goal of this study is to examine whether educational interest groups’ roles explain local charter school service delivery in Colorado. Many scholars have found that interest groups affect educational policy outcomes and performance at national, state, and local levels. However, it is not clear whether interest groups’ roles are still important in local charter school service delivery. This article seeks to address this lack of knowledge by analyzing the variation of charter school service delivery in Colorado school districts. The present study tests seven hypotheses, using multiple ordinary least square (OLS) regression analysis. The final statistical results demonstrate that a school district with more pro-school choice movement interest groups, minority students, and residents who earn a bachelor's degree or above is more likely to deliver charter school services to its residents.

Keywords:

• Charter school service delivery
• Colorado's school districts
• Interest groups
• School district attributes

Notes

1 CDE indicates that as of the 2011–2012 school year, Colorado has 1,773 K-12 public schools.

2 The survey question for the pro-SCM interest group variable is as follows: How many organized interest groups do you think positively affect your own school district's school choice movement programs? Please write down the number of them.

3 Their primary role is to bargain with school boards for teachers’ salaries and benefits (Cooper & Sureau, 2008).

4 The survey question for the anti-SCM interest group variable is as follows:

What percentages of K-12 teachers in your school districts are members of the Colorado Education Association (CEA) or the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)? Please circle below.

5 On the basis of Ostrom's policy process flowchart, the policy action in this article indicates that Colorado's school districts deliver charter school services to their residents.

6 178 Colorado school districts are composed of 86 school districts with more than 500 students and 92 school districts with less than 500 students. Among 103 usable responses and 75 nonresponses, 49 school districts (48%) with more than 500 students provided this study with usable responses while 37 school districts (49%) with more than 500 students did not respond to the survey. In addition, 54 school districts (52%) with less than 500 students supported this study with usable responses while 38 school districts (51%) with less than 500 students did not respond to the survey. Each case has the difference of 1% (i.e. 48–49% and 52–51%). These results declare that there is not serious non-response bias issue in this study. Thus, we can say that this sample is nearly representative of the population of this study.

7 Scholars say that if an independent variable has a high value of VIF and a low value of tolerance, this independent variable might meet a multicollinearity issue. However, there is not a clear-cut rule for the value of VIF and tolerance. Scholars do not decide what a large (or small) VIF and a small (or large) tolerance are. Namely, scholars have a different standard for VIF and tolerance. Some scholars (Lee & Jeong, 2012; Leech et al., 2011) argue that when a value of VIF is greater than 5 and a value of tolerance is smaller than 0.5, it is possible for a serious multicollinearity issue to exist. In the article, the authors follow Kennedy's and O’Brien's standard for VIF's and tolerance's value. They highlight that there is no multicollinearity issue if the value of VIF is smaller than 10 and the value of tolerance is higher than 0.1.

8 Mintrom (2000) classifies policy networks into two types—external policy networks and internal policy networks. External policy networks define networks of policy actors at the different levels while internal policy networks refer to networks of policy actors at the same level. Thus, it is right to use the term external policy networks in this study because a school district is at the local level and the aforementioned seven organizations are at the state level.