Schoolhouse Democracy: Public Opinion and Education Spending in the States

Using new estimates of state-level public opinion, I explore the relationship between support for increased education spending and statewide per-pupil expenditures from 1986 to 2013. In the 1980s, there was a modest, positive relationship between public opinion and actual spending: States with greater support for increased education spending tended to have slightly higher per pupil expenditures. Over the next three decades, this relationship...