Policy Feedback in Child Care and Public Schooling
Overview
Governments differ as to the scope and nature of public investment in early years and public schooling, including the degree to which policy frameworks foster “choice” and/or provide oversight of the relative quality of care. My research in this area explores the ways in which the decisions governments make shape policy feedback effects, including exploring the distributive inequalities related access to high quality early learning environments, and the proliferation of school choice both within- and outside-of public education systems.
For related work on school choice, see my affiliation with the Comparative Education Project.
Featured Publications
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Child Care Policy and Child Care Burden: The Distributive Implications of Regulation Decisions
Abstract: In this paper, we examine the distributional implications of market-based early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. Using a quasi-behavioral conjoint survey of 606 parents, we find that access to public subsidies influences the ECEC preferences of lower income parents (making them more similar to higher income parents). Meanwhile, non-subsidized lower income parents are more cost-conscious; which is likely to result in their using less well-regulated ECEC that is more variable in quality. We explore the implications of these findings regarding the effects of policy on vulnerable children’s access to high quality ECEC services.
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Politics and Religion: Identifying the Correlates of Support for Merging the Public and Separate School Systems in Ontario
This article explores the factors associated with support for a merger of Ontario’s two publicly funded school systems (secular and Catholic). Drawing upon survey data from over 2,000 Ontarians, we find evidence that both political attitudes and religious identities are associated with school system attitudes, but that religious identity has a much more powerful impact. Our findings suggest that coalitions of support and opposition to a school system merger in Ontario are complex and not driven by a single obvious cleavage.
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Puzzling Publics: The Role of Reflexive Learning in Universal Pre-Kindergarten Policy Innovation in Canada and the US
Through two paired comparisons of early years policy innovation (Florida / California; and Ontario / Alberta), we find that policy innovation occurs when publics are engaged in policy formulation through iterative, ongoing public consultation on policy instruments and settings. We argue that this type of policy learning (reflexive learning) can restructure policy problems and widen the menu of available policy options, generate legitimacy in the policy process and facilitate major policy change.
