trends in public attitudes toward educational spending

A. WADE SMITH

T R E N D S I N P U B L I C A T T I T U D E S T O W A R D

E D U C A T I O N A L S P E N D I N G *

(Received 7 August, 1987)

ABSTRACT. During the 1970s, only about half of the adult American population wanted to allocate more money to education. But in the 1980s, almost two-thirds of those surveyed have wanted to spend more on education. Using the 1972--86 NORC General Social Surveys (of which there are a clozen replications -- each with about 1500 respondents), this paper outlines the sources of this increase in support for educational spending. Over time, while education has been consistently given a higher priority by members of younger birth cohorts, and respondents educated beyond high school, racial differences have narrowed and regional differences have been reversed. In this decade, whites and non-Southerners are increasingly supportive of more spending on education than they were earlier. Finally, while rural/urban differences on education as a national spending priority have remained, this trend is less independent of larger social forces than the others. These results imply that to be most effective in producing increased allocations from public sources, educators and their political supporters should recognize those particular segments of the population who may be most responsive to calls for increased funding.

One of the most cherished ideals in American society is the relatively

universal availability of a quality education to an extent limited only by

individual ability. Universal educational opportunity is also related to a host of other aspects of the American Creed, among them: an informed

polity determining its own future by voting; tolerance of (and by) others

from different backgrounds; and increasing individual and societal

attainment earned on the twin bases of hard work and specialized knowledge. It stands to reason that public confidence in the nation's

educational establishment should vary directly with people's perception

of the extent to which an education is worth the effort in terms of the

increased political, social, and economic power it yields. This line of reasoning would also lead to the expectation that public support for expenditures on education would vary directly with confidence in educational institutions to "deliver the goods".

The problem is that, since 1973, trends in public confidence in the educational establishment and support for expenditures on education

Social Indicators Research 21 (1989) 159-- 173. �9 1989 by Klu veer Academic Publishers.

160 A. WADE SMITH

contradict one another. According to the General Social Survey (GSS), approximately 35 percent of the population has had "a great deal" of confidence in "the people running" educational institutions. While this highly confident segment has varied considerably, from almost half of those surveyed (in 1974) to less than 30 percent (in 1978 and '84), this pattern is typical of most of the items measuring confidence in a host of institutions (Smith, 1981). On the other hand, in every GSS during the 1970s, only a little more than half of the respondents consistently thought that "too little" money was being spent on "improving the nation's educational system", But in the 1980s, the GSS has recorded significant increases in this category of this national priority item. Since 1983, about two-thirds of all respondents have consistently wanted to spend more on education. Why, if confidence in education is relatively stable, is support for educational spending on the increase?

Almost every answer serves to diminish the extent of a direct connection between confidence in and support for education (Smith, 1987). Even a hypothetical inverse relationship between confidence and support (wherein more spending was desired because there was a decreasing perception that the educational system "worked"), fails to obtain because public confidence in education is not systematically decreasing. Obviously, regardless of their confidence in educational leaders, there is an increasing segment of the population who want more expenditures on education. Thus the general question posed above becomes refined into the more specific research question of: Who supports increased expenditures on education?

D A T A AND M E T H O D S

The Data

This paper uses the cumulative General Social Surveys (1972--1986) to decompose the trends in public attitudes toward the educational establishment and spending on education. The GSS is a relatively annual social indicator survey based on independent probability samples of the U.S. adult population (i.e., these are not panel data). Since the average sample size in the GSS is about 1500 cases, and there have been twelve surveys since 1973 when questions on both support for

EDUCATIONAL SPENDING 161

and confidence in education have appeared, approximately 18,000 cases are involved. Sampling errors in any of the GSSs never exceed five percent, and the usual 95 percent confidence intervals apply. Since the GSS is in the public domain, there are a host of references which attest to its quality (of., Hyman, 1978).

Because a respondent's confidence in the educational establishment has been demonstrated to bear no significant relationship to their response to spending on education (Smith, 1987), this research retreats to the even more basic question regarding the demographic characteristics of those who increasingly favor, increased expenditures on education. Specifically, the research here uses respondent's year of birth to develop a cohort measure, and includes other demographic variables (race, region and size of place of residence) in addition to his/her own educational attainment.

Previous research has found cohort membership to be related to a host of public policy issues, and a key in the analyses of longitudinal data (cf., Smith, 1985). The analyses below employ five cohorts, representing different historical contexts in which the respondents were raised and educated:

(1) The Wor ld W a r I C o h o r t - - born in or before 1906, these respondents were at least 66 years old in 1972 and 80 or older by 1986.

(2) The Depress ion C o h o r t - - persons aged 49--65 in 1972 and 63--79 in 1986. They were born between 1907 and 1923, and reached age 21 between 1928 and 1944.

(3) The W o r l d W a r I I C o h o r t - - persons born between 1924 and 1937, reaching the age of majority between 1945 and 1956. These people were 33--48 in 1972 and 47--62 in 1986.

(4) The V i e t n a m C o h o r t - - born between 1938 and 1956, these respondents were 18--32 in 1972 and 30--46 in 1986. They reached age 18 (the age of majority for this group) between 1956 and 1974.

(5) The Yuppies C o h o r t - - persons 18 years old in 1975, and 18--29 years old in 1986. Born since 1957, these people were too young to be included in pre-1975 surveys; thus calculations for this group are based on only ten years.

162 A. WADE SMITH

In assessing the impact of time on cumulative changes in attitudes toward spending on education, it is important to consider the climate of the nation at the time a cohort is socialized within the schools, l The above groupings show the effects that the passage of time may have on persons born and/or educated more or less in the same era (Evan, 1959; Ryder, 1965; Elder, 1975).

Educational attainment is categorized as a trichotomy: (1) less than a high school graduate, which includes all respondents with 0--11 years of formal schooling; (2) high school graduate, 12 years of formal schooling; and (3) some college attainment, which includes all education beyond high school (e.g., trade or technical schools).

Methods and Procedures

Survey metric analysis is the procedure by which a pool of sample surveys may be examined for proportional differences (herein called effects) between categories of background characteristics of respondents. The effects may be described using a statistic (d) stipulating either a no difference, a constant difference, or a linear trend relationship between categories of background variables and respondent attitudes over time. If respondents of different backgrounds obtain similar distributions within categories of dependent variables, this produces an effect of no difference. If categories of variables maintain differences in propor- tionate replies, these differences are said to be constant or consistent. Finally, should significant differences exist between categories, but these differences either increase or decrease over time, the effects are presented as linear or quasi-linear models (Davis, 1974, 1975a, 1976, 1978).

At each stage of the analysis, a goodness-of-fit test using a chi square adjusted for multi-stage samples was employed? This adjusted chi square would indicate whether a hypothesized model accurately repre- sented the data. If a particular model is rejected, the next step would be to explore a more advanced model. Although the no difference model may appear to adequately represent the data, it is sometimes advanta- geous to test the accuracy of the description of a more advanced model (e.g., of a constant difference) so that otherwise apparently irrelevant relationships can be explored (Taylor, 1980).

E D U C A T I O N A L S P E N D I N G 163

The model under investigation at any given stage of the analysis was compared to prior models to determine if any significant improvement in the description of the data was obtained. For example, by subtracting the chi square (and degrees of freedom) used in the test of the constant difference hypothesis from the chi square (and corresponding degrees of freedom) obtained in the test of no difference, the result is a one degree of freedom of the improvement of the latter model over the former. The accuracy of the description offered by a linear model may be similarly compared to that offered by the constant difference model. If the improvement in fit obtained by the more advanced model was not significant at the 0.001 level, the simpler model was accepted; the advanced model, rejected)

T H E F I N D I N G S

As Figure 1 shows, when compared to initial levels, there has been a modest increase in public willingness to spend more for education in the 1980s. Specifically, more recent surveys show that above 11.1%

80

60

40t k -

13.-

20-

I I I I I I ~ l I 1 I

Year

t Spend More

o Enough

w Spend Less 4

Fig. 1. Trends in spending for education.

80

more respondents in the 1980s say they would spend more on education, and this increase is offset by approximately equal losses in the percent of people who think current spending levels are enough, or who would spend even less. Who are these respondents willing to increase educational expenditures?

4- Vietnam

o Yuppies

L World War I1

Depression

World War I

70

60

-E

o 50

12-

40

30

164 A. W A D E SMITH

2 0 i i i i i i i i i i i

~ - t o t o i ~ 00 0 t 'q r ~ ~ t o t o

Year

Fig. 2. Cohort trends for more educational spending.

First, every cohort is not in favor of such a change. Using the World War II cohort as the base, Table I shows the effects of cohort membership on attitudes toward educational spending. The newest (Youth or "Yuppies") cohort is 8.1 percent more inclined than the base group to spend more, but this appears to be more of the average difference between the two groups than a hard and fast constant difference. (Note the relatively large standard error!) About 20 percent more Vietnam era respondents are consistently more willing to increase educational expenditures than among the base group, while in excess of 11 percent fewer Depression era respondents are so inclined.

The oldest or World War I cohort seem to be becoming more similar


TABLE I Summary models of independent variables and positive attitudes toward spending more

for education as a national priority. Cohort Differences; Base = World War II

Category Hypothesis Adjusted D.F Probability Decision chi-square

Yuppies No difference 17.0 9 0.056 Accept Constant diff. 3.6 8 0.894 Accept Reduction from

constant term 15.6 1 < 0.001 Significant

Vietnam No difference 31.7 11 < 0.001 Reject Constant diff. 6.5 10 0.756 Accept Reduction from


Depression No difference 23.8 11 < 0.02 Reject Constant diff. 11.3 10 0.287 Accept Reduction from


WW I No difference 73.1 11 < 0.001 Reject Constant diff. 34.3 10 < 0.001 Reject Linear trend 18.4 9 < 0.03 Reject Reduction from

linear term 15.9 1 < 0.001 Significant

Final Models

Yuppies d ~ 0.081 e = 0.194 Vietnam d ~ 0.194 e = 0.017 Depression d = 0.112 e ~ 0.016 World War I d = - 0 . 1 4 5 + 0.055 (year - - 1973) e = 0.373

to the base group at a rate which could be described using a linear equation. Though initially almost 15 percent less inclined to favor more spending, this group could be seen as closing the gap at a rate of 5.5 percent per year. But the fact that the error term is so much larger than the change term (see Table I) indicates that it is actually the rapidly declining size of this group that is responsible for the apparent change. In 1972 this cohort was 11.7 percent of the sample, but by 1986 they constituted only 3.2 percent. Consequently, it appears that those who favor increased spending for education do tend to die less rapidly!

Figure 3 presents the distribution of respondents who would spend more on education, separated by the actual educational attainment of

74

A. W A D E SMITH

69

64 -

E 59 - k .

13_

5 4 �84

49 ~-

44 1973

I I I I I I I I I I

1974 1975 1976 1977 1976 1980 1983 1984 1985 1986

Year

166

Fig. 3. More educational spending by R's education.

I < HSG

n HSG

N HSG+

the respondent. With little surprise, those respondents who are them- selves more educated than the base group (high school graduates) tend to consistently approve of higher allocations for education. According to Table II, there is an 8.3 percent difference between these two groups. On the other hand, the least educated segment of the population contains 5.2 percent fewer people who would increased educational spending. Both of these differences are robust, meaning that the average over the entire survey pool is fairly consistent.

Such consistency is not evident in the racial differences on this atti- tude item (see Figure 4). While every survey records blacks has having a greater commitment than whites to spending more on education, the difference between these groups is eroding over time. According to Table II, the black/white gap in commitment to more educational spending has been decreasing at about one and one-half percent per year, since 1972. This trend fits quite well, and is robustness of the reduction term indicates that the equation is likely to be quite accurate.

E D U C A T I O N A L SPENDING

TABLE II Educational Differences; Base = High School Graduates

167


HSG+ No difference 27.9 11 < 0.01 Reject Constant diff. 6.1 10 0.799 Accept Reduction from


< HSG No difference 23.2 11 < 0.02 Reject Constant diff. 4.8 10 0.885 Accept Reduction from

constant term 18.4 1 0.001 Significant

Final Models

Some college d ~ 0.083 e z 0.019 Less than high school d ~ -0.052 e m 0.017

Racial Differences; Base ~ Blacks


Whites No difference 123.6 11 < 0.001 Reject Constant diff. 14.1 10 < 0.001 Reject Linear trend 9.8 9 0.494 Accept Reduction from


Final Model

Whites d = -0.265 + 0.0148 (year -- 1972) e =0.013

A s F igure 5 shows, regional d i f ferences on this i tem have also been

changing. In fact, a l though the south seems m o r e c o m m i t t e d to spend ing

on educa t ion th roughou t mos t of the p e r i o d of this invest igat ion, m o r e

recent ly there has been a reversal , with m o r e non -Sou the rne r s than

Sou the rne r s willing to s p e n d m o r e on educa t ion . A s shown in Tab le III,

these d i f ferences may also be de sc r ibed using a l inear equa t ion indica-

t ive of a little m o r e than a one pe rcen t p e r yea r change in the initial

reg ional differences.

80

70

E ~ 6O.

13.

50

168 A. W A D E S M I T H

i Whites

n Blacks

40 i i i I i i i i i i i

1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1980 1982 a983 1984 1985 1986

Year

Fig. 4. Racial trends for more educational spending.

66.

61

o 56

[3_

51

46 i i i I i i i i i i i

Year

+ South

o Non-South

Fig. 5. More educational spending by region.

E D U C A T I O N A L S P E N D I N G

TABLE III Regional Differences; Base = South

169


Non-South No difference 97.1 11 < 0.001 Reject Constant diff. 34.8 10 < 0.001 Reject Linear trend 4.7 9 0.855 Accept Reduction from


Final Model

Non-South d = -0 .061 + 0.0108 (year -- 1972) e = 0 . 0 1 9

Size of Place Differences; Base ~ Smallville

Category Hypothesis Adjusted D.F chi-square

Probability Decision

Metropolis No difference 31.3 11 Constant diff. 12.9 10 Reduction from

constant term 18.2 1

< 0.001 0.224

< 0.001

Reject Accept

Significant

Final Model

Larger cities and their suburbs d = 0.093 e = 0.041

Finally, Figure 6 offers a view of the barely unchanging differences between respondents in major urban areas (and their contiguous suburbs) and those from smaller cities and rural towns and counties. While the difference between the two groups can be described as fairly constant (see Table III), the larger than optimal error term is indicative of the tenuous nature of this difference. Actually, it appears as though the changes registered by the base group are fairly smooth, while it is the inconsistent nature of the big city folk which account for the sometimes larger, sometimes smaller difference between them and their small town brethren.

The decomposition of these recorded differences (not shown) is fairly simple because, like gender, the proportions of respondents from various regions, racial groups, and sizes of place of residence changed

76-

A. WADE SMITH

71

66

@

CL

56

51

46

r~

i i i i i i i i i i i

170

Year

I Smal lv i l le

la M e t r o p o l i s

Fig. 6. More educational spending by city size.

very little between 1972 and 1986. On the other hand, there was some cohort replacement, wherein respondents from the younger (Yuppie and Vietnam) cohorts entered the survey population, and older (De- pression and World War I) cohort members departed. When multiplied by the constant differences obtained in Table I, the growing, younger, respondents accounted for 2.5 percent of the overall increase in the increasing inclination to spend more on education. The aforementioned decreasing proportions of the older cohorts, and their disinclination to spend more on education (thus the multiplication of two negative numbers), actually serves to increase the overall trend by 1.4 percent. In other words, 4.9 percent of the 11.2 percent change in attitudes toward educational spending may be accounted for by cohort replacement.

Increasing educational attainment also contributes to more emphasis on education as a public policy issue. The most educated segment of the population increased slightly, and when multiplied by their positive affect toward spending more on education, the overall percentage rises 0.95 percent. A similar increase is obtained as a result of the declining


numbers of less educated respondents, and their lesser willingness to spend more on education. In short, education and cohort effects account for over half of the total increase in the public's willingness to spend more on education.

Although their proportions in the population do not change as dramatically between 1972 and 1986, whites and non-Southerners together account for another 2 percent of the overall 11.2 percent increase. Finally, it appears that 1.3 percent of the increase may be accounted for by changes in attitudes across-the-board (i.e., involving all cohort, racial, educational, and regional groups). Changes in size of place differences have only trivial affects on the overall change toward educational spending because the proportions of the population living in either size of place were not significantly redistributed, and because there were negligible interactions between this variable and cohort, race, and educational attainment.

S U M M A R Y AND I M P L I C A T I O N S

In the final analysis, while there has been a definite shift in attitudes toward spending more for education, this national priority is not uniformly shared. Younger, better educated, urban dwellers consistently want to spend more on education more so than older, less educated small town folk. Blacks give education a higher priority than do whites, although this gap is closing fast. Similarly, the tendency of Southerners to favor more spending on education than non-Southerners disappeared, and then was reversed toward the end of the survey period. Much of the overall increase in the public's willingness to spend more on education can be traced directly to the young and well-educated. The closing racial gap and the reversed postures of region of residence account for another significant proportion of the increase.

In light of this analysis, it seems as though an increased commitment to education is not only far from universal, but shared by (currently) small and well defined segments of the American population. Educators and their allies in the public policy sector must recognize these limits, protecting them whenever necessary and expanding them whenever possible. These sources of change are the very segments of the population likely to experience significant growth in the remainder of this

172 A. W A D E S M I T H

century. Moreover those groups, such as black Americans, who have long-standing and historic commitment to increased education as a vehicle of "empowerment", must be nurtured along with these new- found friends. Only in this way can a true national consensus evolve which ranks spending for education among the highest of national priorities.

N O T E S

* Special thanks to Rodney Ito, Nelson Moore, and Deborah Suit for their assistance in the preparation of the figures and tables. Naturally, I bear sole responsibility for all findings, errors, and omissions.

It is not feasible to incorporate age into this analysis, although period and cohort measures constructed from age are present. While to do so would develop some interesting analyses along the lines first explored by Mason et al. (1973), the straight- forward procedures they described could not be used here because the cohorts are not defined in one year terms. See Glenn (1976, 1980, 1981) for details on the futility of any extended discussion of separating age-period-cohort effects. 2 Because the samples used in this analysis were constructed in two stages (the selection of households and the quotas on respondent characteristics), it is necessary to adjust the chi square, multiplying it by 1.414 (Davis, 1975b, 1976). The degrees of freedom are determined by the number of surveys in the data pool. Each succeeding model consumes one degree of freedom in its test (e.g., the no difference model usually tests with 12 d.f., the constant difference model tests with 11 d.f., etc.). 3 Other methodologies may appear to be more applicable, but survey metric procedures yield superior results given the research questions here -- while minimizing the potential for the types of errors associated with several parametric techniques increasingly used in contingency table analyses. A detailed exposition of the procedures used here is available from Grizzle et al. (1969), who refer to them under the more orthodox heading of "weighted least squares". Davis (1976) compares survey metric procedures with other techniques; while Swafford (1980) notes the vulnerabilities of other methodologies.

Space here does not permit a comparison of different analytical procedures toward convincing doubtful readers of the greater efficacy of survey metric analyses. One residual benefit of using the GSS is that since it is in the public domain, readers taking issue with any methodological aspect of this research can easily acquire a copy of these data for their own use. The GSS is distributed by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Davis, J. A.: 1974, 'Concepts and procedures for constructing odd ratio models for causally ordered, multivariate contingency tables', Studies in Social Change Since 1948. Volume I (February). Chicago: National Opinion Research Center Report 127A:35--92.

Davis, J. A.: 1975a, 'Background characteristics of the U.S. adult population, 1952-- 1972, a survey-metric model', Studies in Social Change Since 1948. Volume II (May). Chicago: National Opinion Research Center Report 127A:35--92.

E D U C A T I O N A L SPENDING 173

Davis, J. A.: 1975b, 'Communism, conformity, cohorts, and categories: American tolerance in 1954 and 1972-- 1973', American Journal of Sociology 81, 491--513.

Davis, J. A.: 1976, 'D systems: Analyzing contingency tables with linear flow graphs', pp. 111--145 in D. R. Heise (ed.), Sociological Methodology, San Francisco: Jossey- Bass.

Davis, J. A.: 1978, 'Studying categorical data over time', Social Science Research 7, 151--179.

Davis, J. A.: 1981, 'The parental families of Americans in birth cohorts 1890--1955: A categorical, linear model estimated from the NORC general social survey', Social Indicators Research 9, 395--454.

Elder, Glen H., Jr.: 1975, 'Age differentiation and the life course', Annual Review of Sociology 1,165--190.

Evan, W. M.: 1959, 'Cohort analysis of survey data', Public Opinion Quarterly 38, 63--72.

Glenn, Norval D.: 1976, 'Cohort analysts' futile quest: Statistical attempts to separate age, period, and cohort effects', American Sociological Review 46, 900--904.

Glenn, Norval D.: 1980, 'Values, attitudes, and beliefs', in O. Brim, Jr. and J. Kagan (eds.), Constancy and Change in Human Development, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Glenn, Norval D.: 1981, 'Age, birth cohorts, and drinking: An illustration of the hazards of inferring effects from cohort data', Journal of Gerontology 36,362--369.

Grizzle, J. E., Starmer, C. F., and Kock, G. C.: 1969, 'The analysis of categorical data by linear models', Biometrics 25,489--504.

Hyman, H. H.: 1978, 'A banquet for secondary analysts', Contemporary Sociology 7, 545--549.

Mason, K. O., Winsborough, H. H., Mason, W. M., and Poole, K. W.: 1973, 'Some methodological issues in cohort analysis of archival data', American Sociological Review 38, 242--258.

Ryder, N. B.: 1965, "The cohort as a concept in the study of social change', American Sociological Review 30,843--861.

Smith, A. W.: 1985, 'Cohorts, education, and the evolution of tolerance', Social Science Research 14, 205--225.

Smith, T. W.: 1981, 'Can we have confidence in confidence? Revisited', in The Mea- surement of Subjective Phenomena, D. F. Johnson (ed.), Wash., DC: U. S. Govern- ment Printing Office.

Swafford, M.: 1980, 'Three parametric techniques for contingency table analysis: A nontechnical commentary', American Sociological Review 45,664--690.

Taylor, D. G.: 1980, 'Procedures for evaluating trends in public opinion', Public Opinion Quarterly 44, 86--100.

Department of Sociology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, U.S.A.

trends in public attitudes toward educational spending

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