Monthly Archives: May 2014

17-year-olds voted at a higher rate than their parents in Chicago

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In Chicago, 17-year-olds were permitted to vote in the March primary election. Chicago is a hotbed of excellent youth civic engagement groups, and they came together to register high school students and encourage them to vote. In the coalition were frequent partners of ours, including the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago and the Mikva Challenge. The result of their work–and students’ own enthusiasm–was a youth turnout rate of 15%. That doesn’t sound very impressive until you learn that students beat their elders in a low-turnout primary. The same thing happened in Takoma Park, MD last year.

I have advocated lowering the voting age to 17, and our Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge recommends considering that policy. While kids are still in school, they can be taught about the voting process and the governmental system before they vote. Most are still at home at 17 and connected to family and neighborhood networks that encourage voting. A year later, many have moved away for the first time into age-segregated youth zones–college dorms or apartments populated by young workers–where turnout is low. This matters because voting is habitual. Mark Franklin even argues that making 18 the age of eligibility permanently lowered turnout in many industrialized democracies. I certainly wouldn’t raise the age, but I would strongly consider lowering it by one year.

the kind of organization we need

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Our important civic organizations can be arrayed from “big” to “deep,” where the big ones touch lots of members, and the deep ones engage relatively small numbers in intensive ways. Meanwhile, the groups can be arrayed from “unified” to “diverse,” where the former organize people who share some common trait–such as an ideology or a social disadvantage–and the latter specialize in convening people who are different from each other. Here are some illustrative examples (with apologies to my friends who are shown below, if you think you should be a placed a little differently).
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The top right quadrant (big and diverse) is empty. Charles Tilly said that all social movements needed WUNC: “worthiness,” “unity,” “numbers,” and “commitment.” If your group is demographically or ideologically homogeneous, you can achieve unity along with numbers pretty easily–you just need the mass membership to demonstrate worthiness and commitment. And if your group is small, you can make it unified by bringing everyone into close relationships with each other.  But if you want all the people in a diverse nation to engage with each other, that requires numbers, commitment, worthiness, and unity in the face of diversity. The nation-state is supposed to achieve that, but it is not working well. It is no surprise that we lack mass, committed organizations capable of generating unity out of diversity–it is a tall order. But we have done better in the past, and we suffer from the lack today.

a conversation about the Millennials and politics

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I enjoyed a conversation yesterday on Minnesota Public Radio with host Kerri Miller, my fellow guest Ron Fournier, and many callers, mostly young adults. The topic was billed as “Can the parties motivate young voters to turn out for midterm elections?,” but the discussion was actually much broader than that. It was about the generation’s engagement with politics, civil society, the news, and social entrepreneurship. The audio is here.

intelligence is more like confidence than height

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(Washington, DC) According to experimental studies collected by Gregory M. Walton*:

  • You can explain to seventh-graders that people build their intelligence by working and learning, and their grades on math will be better for the whole school year.
  • You can give 7th graders a writing exercise designed to affirm their personal values, and as a result, the Black students will be half as likely to receive a D or an F on the whole course (even though their teacher is blind to whether they did the exercise).
  • You can give fifth graders a test and tell them they scored well because they are smart, they scored well because they worked hard, or just give them their scores. Then give them a very hard test on which they all score poorly. Then give them a third test. Those who were told that they scored high the first time because they were smart will do 30 percent worse on the final assessment–their confidence in their innate ability shaken.
  • You can tell African American college students that items from the GRE are just a puzzle and they will perform as well as white students, but tell them the same items are an intelligence test, and they will score much worse.

As Walton argues, your height won’t change depending on the context, but your score on tests will. That implies that intelligence is–to a significant if not complete degree–relational. It is a measure of how you relate to the immediate environment and the other people in it. Much as I would be far more confident, motivated, secure, and competent in my own living room than on a sound stage, I will be more “intelligent” in some settings than others.

These studies have profound implications for how we should test aptitude, whom we ought to promote and admit in school, college, and work, and how we should design educational institutions.

*Gregory M. Walton, “The Myth of Intelligence: Smartness Isn’t Like Height,” in Danielle Allen and Rob Reich, eds., Education, Justice & Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2013), pp. 155-172.

seeking a post-doc at CIRCLE

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The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University seeks a Postdoctoral Fellow in the area of American higher education and college student political learning and engagement. The Postdoctoral Fellow will lead quantitative research on a range of higher education initiatives, specifically the National Study on Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE). This researcher may also provide support for qualitative research, survey development, secondary data-analysis, literature reviews, and program evaluations. S/he will also be responsible for managing and integrating large datasets and using appropriate methods for processing, storing, aggregating, and replicating analysis. Over the duration of the post-doc, NSLVE will increase the automation of data processing and the production of reports. The Postdoctoral Fellow will play an integral role in this transition.

Required:

  • Ph.D. earned May 2013 through August 2014 or ABD (all but dissertation) with anticipated graduation by June 2015, in public policy, political science, higher education, or other social science discipline
  • Strong quantitative background and experience with multivariate statistical techniques
  • Knowledge of at least one statistical package, such as SPSS, STATA, or SAS, and a willingness to work primarily with SPSS
  • Experience using large datasets
  • Proficiency with data management, including an ability to work with relational database software such as Access and Oracle
  • Data workflow management experience
  • Technological experience and adaptability, with excellent computer skills, knowledge of databases, client management and Microsoft Office, as well as an ability and desire to learn more
  • Demonstrated interest in college student civic learning and engagement and/or public participation and civic renewal more broadly

Preferred:

  • Experience with voting data
  • Experience with Catalist database
  • Experience with evaluation methods
  • Experience with qualitative methods
  • Experience with Salesforce
  • Prior record of publications

Duration: August 1, 2014 through July 31, 2015. This is a grant-funded position for one year with a possibility of continuation.

To apply, please submit a CV, a cover letter describing your research interests or plans, a sample publication, and contact information for three references. Send application materials to Kathy O’Connor at kathy.oconnor@tufts.edu. Screening of applicants begins May 15, 2014 and continues until the position is filled.