A busy morning here. I had to dash out a writing thing, and I went to hear the town school superintendent talk about the school budget at a PTA meeting.
As usual, there was very low attendance. Maybe if they held PTA meetings in the evening, instead of at 9am, there would better turnout, but that's another story.
Today, I'm just going to complain about the lack of academic research and news articles about local politics. It's actually fascinating stuff. It's Politics 101. Who gets what? What groups should pay more? What is the best use of an increasingly small pile of cash? What is left, after entitlements? Who makes all the decisions?
Cities get more attention than suburban areas, because that's where all the academics and journalists live, but suburban areas have more people in them. That's where all the voters live.
The lack of attention to local, suburban politics is a pet peeve of mine. #grumble
Apt. 11d 
It might be hard to study in depth. Lots of what you need wouldn’t be public or, if public, easily accessible. You could probably go to meetings and watch and then question people afterward. Sort of like “Tearoom Trade” methodology.
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“Maybe if they held PTA meetings in the evening, instead of at 9am, there would better turnout, but that’s another story.”
Amen!
Where I live, every school board member, superintendent, and school principal is a man, and every elementary school teacher and PTA volunteer is a woman. The schools here are totally segregated, with most of the white kids at one elementary school and most of the Mexican-Americans kids at another. I feel like I’m living in 1960.
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I’d like to stats on folks who have tried different meetin times. Is there a better turn out if the meeting is hld in the evening? I see attendance at public meetings depending on interest, primarily. I’d be no more likely to go to a school board meeting in the evening than the morning, and marginally more likely to go at 9am, before I started my day (as would spouse, who works full time). In the evening, I’m focused on family and more likely to be tired.
Arethere many people who want to go to school board meeting, and can’t? except at times when an acute issue has arisen?
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Our local PTO just moved from evening only (free sitting provided) meetings to evening (same deal with sitting) and day meetings. I still don’t go to either.
I’ve been asked to review a book that develops a new theory of voting in local elections – we’ll see what that’s like. But I think the comment about data problems hits the nail on the head. Political science is all quant now, and I can’t imagine what it would take to gather the kind of data at the suburban level that would be acceptable in today’s political science. My husband, also a political scientist, did some research on property tax overrides and gathering the data he needed to get it published was a NIGHTMARE – just for towns in one state.
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From what I’ve heard, the PTA parents are all SAHMs. They tried holding it in the evening and the working moms still didn’t show up, so they made it more convienent for themselves. I guess I don’t blame them.
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Well, that’s one of the huge problems with pol. sci. being too quant. It’s missing out on major political matters that could be studied scientifically usually qualitative methods.
Just one non-scientific observation… So, I’ve gone to local town meetings in two towns now. Didn’t do much when we lived in the city. The two towns have very different SES, but the debate are remarkably identical. Same issues, same fights, same divisions. There is probably some semi-quant, mostly-qual way of studying the similarities in agendas, because every town has its agenda on the web.
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Our PTO meetings were always in the evening. Most of the mothers around here work at least part time. Those that don’t can’t get sitting during the day.
Our school board meetings are also at night, but I’ve never been. I have read the minutes before. My neighbor is on our town’s planning committee, which is evenly split dems and reps. I hear all kinds of crazy stories from her. Parks and Rec is a good send up of how these things work.
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Where we live, both school board and city council meetings are available on our local TV channel. It’s kind of a dirty little secret — every once in a while, a student of mine (or a neighbor) will mention that they’re absolutely fascinated by these proceedings. I had never seen anything like it until we moved to our neck of the woods. I’ve probably attended live about 4 or 5 times in eight years, and spoken once or twice. It tends to be real local stuff — which drainage ditches need to be cleared on which rural roads, etc. I always have the same feeling — that there’s some real ‘politics’ taking place here somehow. But I’m also not sure how you would study it or say anything meaningful about it. (On the other hand, I’m teaching research methods next year — so I think I’ll assign my grad students to come up with a research project on the topic, and then we’ll have an answer — maybe even some actual research, who knows?)
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What is “qualitative” science? an example from poltiical science? It’s not a word one would use in biology, but I’m guessing it means something in political science. Does it mean trying to measure a phenomenon without numbers, and if so, how does that differ from anecdotes?
In early neurophysiology, there probably was some reported data that was effectively qualitative — for example, measuring the neural response to lots of different pictures and saying something general, like “wow, cool, cells respond to pictures of babies.” But this kind of data was always seen as a preliminary to something, not a final result.
(I was going to preface this with “Maybe I’m being obnoxious, but decided that if I started that way, I was admitting I was obnoxious and I needed to rephrase or decide I wasn’t really worried that I was being obnoxious)
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I’m in the northern VA burbs of DC. Yes, we are in the news shadow of DC. The Post covers every pimple on the face of the DC council, gives the ‘burbs short shrift. We do have a local paper, which is a blessing. It’s supported by the real estate ads, and it devotes a huge amount of coverage to real estate, but it does heed other local issues.
Our other big problem, in terms of transparency of issues, is we are overwhelmingly Dem. Like, 75%. So all struggles take place in the primaries, and the elections are basically coronations.
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an example from political science?
There’s a whole book on how to do it. There’s probably bunches of books, but I can’t remember them. It’s very much not using anecdotes because you’re careful to be systemic, replicable, falsifiable, and all that other stuff.
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The usual point isn’t the quantitative methods are bad, but that by insisting on quantitative methods, you’ve limited the scope of study to things that are quantifiable and thus ignored much of politics. This was maybe less of an issue in IR, where the big questions were often focused on things where you just aren’t going to get a sufficient number of cases for statistical power.
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In biology, I guess we know there are things we can’t understand yet in quantitative terms, but think that the ultimate goal of science has to involve quantifying — so what might be “qualitative” would be seen as generating hypotheses that then have to be measured, with numbers.
But I think I’m looking for the cocktail party answer of what a qualitative political science analysis looks like, not the book!
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If it makes you feel better, you can think of it an extremely long set of dichotomous variables instead of qualitative.
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There is anthropological work on local politics (in the US even), and certainly qualitative sociology as well. I’ll avoid making a snarky comment about political scientists here.
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I could give a three hour lecture on qualitative research. That’s mostly what I did, so that made the transition to journalism really easy.
There are various kinds of qualitative research — document analysis, interviews with participants, interviews with elites, focus groups, and surveys. You can come up with a group of people to interview using randomized samples (did that) or using rolling reputational anaylsis (did that). I’ve also done surveys and focus groups.
Qualitative analysis enables you to ask questions that are simply impossible to answer using the statistics that are available. It’s very time consuming and means that you have to do things that a lot of political scientists are bad at, like talking to real people.
It’s not in vogue right now. The people who get the top jobs are number crunchers particularly in the American subfield. Comparativists do a better job with qualitative research.
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I go to PTA meetings three or four times a year. It’s very useful because I find out about activities and programs that will benefit my kids. Yesterday, I found out that the town is offering a special ed baseball class. I wouldn’t have found out about it otherwise.
I get to know the principal and other school leaders. Yesterday, I met the superintendent. Found out that he grew up in a house that was right next to my house in my old town. Knowing school officials is useful, because if there is some problem, I can go to the top and get help.
I volunteer for very little. Well, I volunteered Steve to chaperone a school dance, so he could keep an eye on Jonah. Again, useful.
I learned that the sequester is going to have a big impact on special education. So, now I”m working on article about that. Again, useful.
The highly involved PTA parents are rewarded by the school. Their kids get the best teachers. I find out which teachers have the best reputation and try to get my kids in those classes. Again, useful.
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Local stuff is underexplored both by journalists (as you were saying the other day) and by political scientists. A few years ago my city got some federal money for road repair – TARP/recovery, I think – and literally spent an entire year widening about one mile of road. It happened to be on my way to school. I was a serious high school journalist, and I kept thinking, why doesn’t someone do a story on how these federal funds are being used, why it’s taking so long, who’s getting this money, what the politics are, etc.? It would have connected up really well with the national story , too.
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Our PTA meetings are so very different from what you guys describe. Ours are simultaneously translated into 3 languages, so they are a bit chaotic and loud. We always pair them with an evening school event, so families are already there. (also serve meal/have childcare) We have as many dads as moms.
I do go to school board meetings. (Or watch on TV) It’s actually quite fascinating (and surprisingly complicated) stuff. It’s taken me 4 years to fully understand how our local schools are financed.
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“The highly involved PTA parents are rewarded by the school. Their kids get the best teachers.”
Interesting. I wonder if the “reward” systems in most schools are not so much a quid pro quo (you volunteer, thus school says yes to your teacher request and no to those who didn’t volunteer) but is more a result of the reality that a mother having been physically present at school soon becomes privy to school gossip and learns such requests can be made in the first place – and she feels entitled to make such requests.
OTOH, I’ve seen too much school volunteering backfire on some folks – like they get viewed as “the help” and get dismissed when a big issue comes up. The school knows PTA supermom is not really going to sue them.
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“The highly involved PTA parents are rewarded by the school. Their kids get the best teachers.”
This was one of the big reasons we chose a private school, so that the “highly involved PTA parents” (which we are incapable of being by principle and inclination regardless of time) wouldn’t get rewards for their children over ours. I agree that it happens.
I agree that the reward system for “involved parents” isn’t usually a quid pro quo. The really involved parents become part of the school staffing community. The teachers know them and their children better than they know everyone else. A good, effective volunteer gets the same professional courtesy that another teacher would because they really do contribute to the vital function of the school. As you say, you don’t get power, though, you get access and knowledge.
When I was working, I did not realize how much of this I missed out on, even though I knew I was missing stuff. Our school is well run, and my kids are easy kids, so we never had significant issues, but my current flexibility means that I know a lot more. Knowing more helps, but it doesn’t give any power if something important was wrong, we would just have to leave. In general, I approve of this lack of power, because I worry what other parents would do with it, if it were available.
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“In general, I approve of this lack of power, because I worry what other parents would do with it, if it were available.”
Amen! That said, I wonder how many PTA moms agree to volunteer on the mistaken assumption that doing so will give them actual power. I see some women around here at the one so-called “good” school for whom PTA volunteering is a 20+ hour/week unpaid job. Meanwhile, private school here is anywhere from $3k to $5k a year – quite a bargain when compared to big city prices. I did the math, and decided paying with my money is ultimately cheaper than paying with my time.
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