Oregon Ballot Measure 97 was a contentious measure on the Oregon 2016 ballot that sought to raise taxes on corporations with sales over 25 million dollars within the state of Oregon. Predictably, there was a considerable amount of lobbying targeting elites and expansive campaigns targeting the public intending to promote or block the measure. Theoretically, this research applies the Narrative Policy Framework to describe these communications in terms of the active narratives within the discourse, assess their effect on the general public and their effect on the Measure 97 election outcome. Methodologically, we leverage qualitative interviews to describe the active narratives; next we assess the potential effects of those same narratives operationalized within a survey experiment administered to an online pool of census‐balanced respondents. We explore our findings through narrative congruence, character affect, and vote switching, as well as in light of the recent election results, where Measure 97 failed to pass. Our models are able to connect narrative effects, public opinion, and policy outcomes via the ballot measure process. We argue that while narrative has discernable effects, it is imperative that future scholarship also consider other factors when examining the role of policy narratives and policy outcomes.
Student enrollment and transfer patterns between the traditional public and charter school sectors help shape the role of charter schools in the broader educational ecosystem, especially as related to the enrollment and segregation of low-income students, English learners, students of color, and students in special education. We examine patterns of student transfer between traditional public schools and charter schools among four of Texas’s largest charter networks, which cumulatively make up over one-third of Texas charter students. We find that these schools serve fewer special education students than traditional public schools, but a greater share of low-income and English learners. Transfers between sectors contribute to enrollment gaps in special education and other classifications, but the findings do not apply uniformly across charter districts, student enrollment classifications, or grade levels. These findings highlight nuanced enrollment patterns between the charter sector and traditional public schools, suggesting that differences in student characteristics between sectors likely stem from a range of sources. Policymakers should acknowledge this nuance, consider alternatives to blanket enrollment regulation policies, and conduct similar analyses of enrollment patterns among charter districts.
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