Chapter 29 Exercises

These exercises ask you to apply the chapter's frameworks to your own state, district, and life. Several involve original research using state-level data; budget thirty to ninety minutes for each. Bring your findings to class discussion or write them up in 250-500 words each.

Exercise 1: Identify Your School District's Per-Pupil Spending and Demographics

Find the public school district that serves your home address. (If you live in a college town, also find the district where you grew up — the comparison is often illuminating.) Then locate the following data points:

  • Per-pupil spending, current year if available, prior year if not. Available from the National Center for Education Statistics (nces.ed.gov), Census Bureau Annual Survey of School System Finances, or your state department of education.
  • Demographics: percentage of students by race/ethnicity, percentage eligible for free and reduced-price meals (a standard proxy for low-income students), percentage of English-language learners, percentage receiving special-education services.
  • Outcomes: state assessment proficiency rates in reading and math, graduation rates, and any available college-going data.
  • Funding sources: approximate breakdown of district revenue by federal, state, and local sources.

Compare your district to the state average and to a contrasting district (in the same state, with substantially different demographics or property-tax base). Write up the differences and discuss what the per-pupil spending figure does and does not capture about educational quality.

Exercise 2: Analyze Your State's School-Choice Landscape

For your state, document:

  • Charter law: Does your state have a charter law? When was it enacted? How many charter schools operate in the state? What share of public-school enrollment do they serve? Are charter authorizers state-level, district-level, or a mix?
  • Voucher / ESA program: Does your state have a voucher or ESA program? What is the eligibility (income-based, universal, or by category)? What is the average award? Approximately how many students participate?
  • Public-school choice: What within-district and inter-district choice options exist? Are there magnet schools? Selective-enrollment schools?
  • Homeschooling regulation: What does your state require of homeschoolers (registration, curriculum, testing)?

Then evaluate: Where does your state fit on the school-choice spectrum? Is the landscape changing (recent legislative expansions or contractions)? What is the strongest argument for and against the current arrangement, given the empirical literature discussed in the chapter?

Exercise 3: Trace a Current Title IX Dispute

Identify a current Title IX dispute — either a specific institutional case (a complaint, an investigation, a court ruling) or a federal regulatory dispute (the most recent revision and its current legal status). Helpful sources: Department of Education's OCR docket, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) case database, the Know Your IX advocacy database, and reporting in Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Trace the dispute through:

  1. The factual allegation or regulatory question. What specifically is at issue?
  2. The applicable legal framework. What rule, regulation, or statute is being invoked?
  3. The opposing positions. What is each side arguing?
  4. The procedural posture. Where in the legal/regulatory process is the dispute?

Then steel-man both sides: write the strongest version of each party's argument in 150 words. Identify which empirical questions, if resolved, would most clarify the dispute.

Exercise 4: Steel-Man Broad Student-Loan Cancellation

In 400-500 words, write the strongest possible argument for broad cancellation of federal student loans. Then in 400-500 words, write the strongest possible argument against. Each argument should:

  • Cite specific empirical evidence (program outcomes, distributional analyses, macroeconomic studies).
  • Acknowledge the strongest counterargument.
  • Take a clear position on what the policy should be, and explain why.

The exercise is graded on the quality of the argumentation on the side you find less persuasive. (The point is to demonstrate you can articulate the position you do not hold.) Note where the empirical and the normative claims separate.

Exercise 5: Democracy Audit — Educational Outcomes in Your District

Building on the Democracy Audit running across this textbook:

  • Document the educational outcomes in your congressional district (graduation rates, college-going rates, post-secondary enrollment by income quartile if available, NAEP scores if your district participates).
  • Compare these outcomes to district demographics (income, race/ethnicity, English-learner share).
  • Identify any school-finance litigation, recent state legislative action, or federal civil-rights enforcement that has affected your district.
  • Assess: How well does the educational system in your district serve all students? Where is performance strong? Where weak? What state or local policy levers are most relevant?

Write up your findings in 500-700 words. Connect the analysis to the theme of "power flows to those who show up" — who participates in your local school-board elections, and what does turnout look like?

Exercise 6: Compare Two State Curriculum Statutes

Locate the actual text (not just news reporting) of two recent state-level curriculum statutes — one from the political right (Florida HB 7 / Stop WOKE Act, Texas HB 3979, Tennessee SB 0623, or similar), and one from the political left (California's revised mathematics framework, Illinois HB 246 requiring inclusion of LGBTQ history, New Jersey's Amistad Bill mandating Black history instruction, or similar).

Compare:

  • What does each statute actually require or prohibit? Be specific.
  • What is the empirical basis or expert consensus invoked?
  • What concerns motivate the statute?
  • What concerns are raised by opponents?

In 600 words, assess: Where does each statute address a real concern? Where does each go beyond the evidence? Where would a thoughtful adopter of the textbook's "balance" framework draw lines?

Exercise 7: The PSLF Application

Locate the current PSLF Help Tool on the Department of Education website. Walk through the eligibility check as if you were a borrower (you don't need actual loans; the tool can be explored without submission). Then read three first-person accounts from PSLF applicants — at least one whose application was denied, at least one whose application was approved, and at least one who is currently in the qualifying-payment process.

Reflect on: What was the experience of these borrowers? What administrative complexity did they navigate? What does the experience tell you about the gap between policy design and policy implementation? Connect to the chapter's discussion of "the gap between how government is supposed to work and how it actually works."

Exercise 8: Imagine the Policy You Would Defend

Suppose you are appointed to your state's Board of Education. You can advance one substantial policy change — in K-12 funding, school choice, curriculum standards, or accountability — that you think would meaningfully improve outcomes for the state's students.

In 500-700 words:

  1. Specify the policy concretely (what statute, regulation, or budget change).
  2. State the empirical basis for expecting improvement.
  3. Identify the strongest objection — both on principle and on practical implementation.
  4. Estimate the political feasibility, given your state's current political composition.
  5. Describe the coalition you would need to build to enact it.

This exercise tests whether the chapter's frameworks have given you tools to think about education policy as a working political problem, not just as a set of debates.

Exercise 9: Attend a School-Board Meeting

Attend (in person or via livestream) at least one regular meeting of your local school board. Many districts now stream and archive meetings on YouTube or via the district website; meeting agendas are typically posted in advance under state open-meetings laws.

Document the following:

  • Composition. How many board members? Are they elected or appointed? When were they last elected, and by what margin? What was the turnout in their election?
  • Agenda. What items appeared on the agenda you observed? Categorize them: routine administrative matters (budget approvals, personnel actions), curricular or programmatic matters, public-comment-driven matters, accountability or compliance matters.
  • Public comment. How many members of the public spoke? On what topics? Were comments organized around any particular issue? How did the board respond?
  • Decisions. What votes were taken? Were any votes split?

In 400-600 words, reflect on what you observed. How does the actual practice of local school governance compare to the textbook's description? Where is power exercised? Whose voices are amplified? Whose are absent?

The exercise reinforces the chapter's claim that school-board elections — and school-board meetings — are sites of significant educational decision-making. They are also among the lowest-turnout, lowest-participation arenas in American political life. The gap between formal authority and actual participation is a recurring theme in American government.

Exercise 10: Research a Persistent Achievement Gap

Identify one specific achievement gap in your state — by race, income, English-learner status, disability status, geography, or some combination. Use NAEP data, your state assessment data, graduation rates, or college-going rates. Be specific about the gap (which two or more groups, on what measure, of what magnitude, in what year).

Then research:

  • The historical trajectory. Has the gap widened, narrowed, or remained stable over the past 10-15 years? What events might explain the trajectory?
  • The state policy responses. What specific state-level interventions (funding equalization, targeted programs, accountability requirements, curriculum changes) have been attempted to address the gap?
  • The district-level variation. Are there districts in your state that show smaller gaps than the state average for the same demographic groups? What appears to distinguish those districts? (Be cautious about cherry-picking; the evidence on "outlier" districts is often weaker than reform advocates suggest.)
  • The empirical literature. What does rigorous research (lottery-based studies, regression-discontinuity designs, randomized trials) suggest about the most effective interventions?

In 600-800 words, present your findings. Distinguish between what is empirically established, what is contested, and what is genuinely unknown. Avoid both excessive optimism (any intervention will close the gap) and excessive pessimism (nothing works).

Exercise 11: Map the Coalitions on a Specific Education Policy Question

Pick one current state-level or federal-level education policy question (e.g., universal ESA expansion, broad student-loan cancellation, gender-identity policy in K-12, the abolition of the Department of Education, or any specific state curriculum statute). Map the coalitions on each side:

  • Identify the major organized advocacy groups taking each position. Use ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer (for 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations), state-level lobbying disclosure databases, and OpenSecrets for federal-level activity.
  • Identify the major funders behind each coalition. Foundations (Gates, Walton, Bradley, Hewlett, Open Society) and corporate donors are typically traceable through 990 forms and disclosure filings.
  • Identify the elected officials most prominently associated with each side. What does their record show on related issues?
  • Identify any unusual coalition partners — i.e., advocates whose positions on this question diverge from their positions on related issues. These tend to be analytically interesting.

In 500-700 words, present the coalition map. Use this exercise to develop your understanding that education policy is not a debate among isolated individuals; it is a contest among organized interests with funding, staff, communications strategies, and political relationships. Power in this domain flows along the lines you have just traced.

Exercise 12: Compare Federal and State Responses to a Common Challenge

Pick one challenge confronting American education that has received both federal and state-level attention: the post-pandemic learning recovery, the literacy/reading-instruction debate, college affordability, or the politics of curriculum. Compare:

  • What has the federal government done? What programs, regulations, funding decisions, executive actions?
  • What have state governments done? Where is variation greatest? Where is convergence apparent?
  • Which level has done more — and more effectively?

In 500-700 words, assess the appropriate division of labor. Where does the chapter's federalism framework support more federal action? Where does it support more state action? Where is the question genuinely contested?

This exercise asks you to apply the chapter's central framework — the federalism reality — to a working policy problem. The answer is rarely "everything should be federal" or "everything should be state"; the harder question is which questions are best decided where, and why.