By Ethan Brill-Cass ’23, Breeze Floyd ’22, and Abby Nicholson ’23
Introduction
In the spring of 2020, students of all ages were sent home as COVID-19 cases quickly increased throughout America. Although education was already an issue that received frequent bipartisan attention, schools closing added yet another complex debate. Education remains an issue where consequential decisions are often made at the state and local level, which COVID-19 highlighted. With no federal level reopening plan, individual states determined their own course, making education a key topic during the 2020 election. This post explores how much attention education received from a sample of State Senate candidates in Connecticut, Georgia, and Minnesota and compares the frequency of mentions between the parties.
Education received a notable amount of attention during the 2020 campaign, with 65% of the candidates we tracked in the Connecticut, Georgia, and Minnesota State Senate races including it on their websites. Education continued to receive a significant amount of attention during the 2021 legislative sessions in these three states. Some education-related bills result in a significant partisan divide, though, as evidenced in Connecticut with passage of a law that removes the religious exemption from required vaccines for students. Education is an important issue that impacts most people, from parents and students to residents concerned with property value or taxes. This post will also examine how much attention education received during the 2021 legislative session and to what extent the issues remain bipartisan.
About the Data
During the Fall 2020 semester, students collected data from a sample of State Senate candidate websites and Facebook ads in Connecticut, Georgia, and Minnesota. Students coded both websites and Facebook ads for mentions of various issues, including education, voting rights, abortion, gun control, and healthcare.
During the Spring 2021 semester, members of the Legislative politics and Elections Lab coded State Senate bills from Connecticut, Georgia, and Minnesota to explore the amount of attention specific issues, including education, received. Drawing on data from openstates.org, bills were coded into issue categories including, healthcare, education, voting and elections, abortion, taxes, and policing. Using the bill titles, we coded whether each bill pertained to one of the specific issues listed above.
Education Mentions During the 2020 Election
Education was a topic that received bipartisan attention in the 2020 election. Data collected from 128 State Senate candidate websites, including 37 in Connecticut, 41 in Georgia, and 50 in Minnesota, revealed that education was a popular topic. The most common topics mentioned on the websites were education (83), healthcare (69), jobs/economy (62), budget/taxes (48), and the environment (47). Sixty five percent of candidates mentioned education on their website. Overall, 66% of Democrats and 64% of Republican candidates mentioned education demonstrating that education receives significant attention at the state level from both parties. Figure 1 shows the proportion of State Senate candidate websites that contained an issue statement on education broken down by party and state.
Education is a broad topic, and issue mentions can focus on COVID, funding, state testing, teachers’ salaries, infrastructure, and much more. For example, Minnesota Democratic candidate Ann Johnson Stewart’s website stated, “We need to fully fund Minnesota’s public education system, close racial, economic, and geographic achievement gaps, and invest in workforce training programs.” Georgia GOP candidate Clint Dixon advocates for, “Protecting our world-class schools, supporting our teachers, reducing testing, and empowering parents and students. Fully fund our schools and deliver teacher pay raises,” on his campaign website. Some candidates, including Democrat Matt Little, added a list of prior accomplishments surrounding education legislation, while other candidates, like Republican Warren Limmer, mentioned COVID-19 and the need to reopen schools. While education is a broad issue, it unquestionably received State Senate candidates’ attention during the 2020 election.
Examining 2020 Facebook ad data collected from 144 candidates running for State Senate seats in Connecticut, Georgia, and Minnesota reveals that education mentions receive bipartisan attention. The data include 1,275 unique Facebook ads that these candidates ran between September 6, 2020, and November 2, 2020. To calculate the proportion of Facebook ads mentioning an issue, we use the “estimated spend” of an ad — the amount that ad costs to run. The proportion of Facebook ads that mention education for a given party in a given state is calculated by adding up the amount spent on ads that mentioned education then dividing that amount by the amount of money spent on ads overall by the party in that state.
Based on our viewing of the over 200 ads that mentioned education, some clear trends reveal how candidates discuss educational issues. One major trend was education issue mentions without any clear policy message, often stating vague support for teachers, students, or fixing the school system. Some ads were even more ambiguous and merely had the word education listed or featured in an image with no further details. This pattern was not confined to either party nor to any one state. Ryan Fazio’s ad, shown below, is an example. The advertisement includes no education policy information but instead simply says, “Good schools.”
Although many of the ads did not have explicit policy content, there were various specific education issues mentioned in several ads. Candidates focused considerable attention on the issue of school funding. Candidates also made claims about bringing back more money for the local school district from the statehouse or attacked an opponent for cutting education funding.
School choice was an issue discussed commonly by Republicans. Likewise, local control, or anti-regionalization, was frequently mentioned and unique to Republicans. The issue was more specific, however, only appearing in ads from Connecticut Republicans.
Education in the 2021 Legislative Session
Considering the emphasis on education during the 2020 election cycle, it is interesting to look at how often these issues are currently being discussed by legislators in each state. We coded 4,176 bills, including 1,144 in Connecticut, 663 in Georgia, and 2,369 in Minnesota. Education received significant attention in each of these three states. In Minnesota, 10.22% of the coded bills included education as a primary issue, making it the most common among the four issues examined below. Education-related bills came in just under voting and election bills in Georgia at 7.09% and 7.39%, respectively. Although healthcare bills outnumbered education bills in Connecticut, 18.27% to 8.30%, the state legislature passed a controversial bill, split mainly along party lines, regarding religious exemptions of vaccines for school children. The measure passed 22 to 14 in the Senate after much partisan debate.
| State | Education | Healthcare | Taxes | Voting |
| Connecticut | 8.30% | 18.27% | 6.56% | 3.32% |
| Georgia | 7.09% | 4.52% | 1.96% | 7.39% |
| Minnesota | 10.22% | 8.78% | 9.20% | 2.57% |
Education Legislation in Georgia
In Georgia, education-related topics received bipartisan attention. Of the 47 total education-related bills, 19 (40%) of them had bipartisan cosponsors. Fifteen bills had only Republican cosponsors and 13 only had Democratic cosponsors.
For each of the coded State Senate bills, we also looked at whether the bill passed both chambers of the Georgia legislature. Unsurprisingly, in Georgia’s Republican controlled legislature, GOP sponsored education bills were the most likely to pass. Of the 15 education-related bills with only Republican cosponsors, nine passed (60%). Only 23% of solely Democrat cosponsored education bills passed with just 3 out of 13 being voted through. Thirty-seven percent of education bills with bipartisan cosponsors passed. Compared to voting and election issues, which received a similar amount of legislative attention in Georgia, education bills were much more likely to have bipartisan cosponsorship.
Vaccine Exemption Debate in Connecticut
Although both parties discussed education in their advertisements and sponsored education bills, partisan divides still emerged on certain education-related topics. For example, a controversial bill which eliminated the religious exemption from required vaccines for students was signed into law in Connecticut. After much debate and multiple amendments, the bill ultimately passed with legislators voting mostly by party line. However, there were several exceptions as a few Democrats cited the importance of autonomy for parents while a few Republicans expressed concern for immunocompromised students. One of the legislators who went against the party line was State Rep. Holly Cheeseman (R-East Lyme). Cheeseman has a history of occasionally aligning with her Democrat colleagues on education issues, such as her recent vote to require climate change education in schools. Likewise, State Sen. Cathy Osten (D-Norwich) has also voted against her party in the past, including on legislation related to gun control.
Conclusion
Overall, education is an issue that receives bipartisan attention in both elections and legislation across Georgia, Connecticut, and Minnesota given that many policy decisions regarding education are made at the state and local level. As education covers a wide range of policy areas, different states and parties have different priorities. Candidates from both parties frequently brought up education as an issue they planned to take action on. This trend was consistent across all three states. Education remained in the spotlight beyond campaigns and was a highly active area of legislation in each of the observed states. In Georgia, education legislation retained its importance to both parties but was still more likely to succeed as a partisan, Republican bill. More research is needed to determine if there is a subtopic of education, such as funding or school choice, that is inherently more likely to succeed; and if so, is that because the topic naturally encourages bipartisanship. Further research may also help determine whether media attention, campaign ads, and campaign websites predict the subtopics of education which actually receive attention from those legislators.
