Exploring the Stability of School Leaders' Perceptions of Competition in Arizona

• In Event: New Directions in School Choice Research: Mechanisms, Processes, and Interactions

Abstract

Despite the large body of work examining whether competition improves student outcomes, yielding small and mixed effects (Bettinger, 2005; Bifulco & Ladd, 2006; Imberman, 2011; Sass, 2006; Zimmer & Buddin, 2009), we know less about how competition works. Recently, one line of research has focused on unpacking the mechanisms of competition by exploring school and district leaders’ perceptions of competition (Creed et al., 2012; Jabbar, 2015; Kasman & Loeb, 2013; Levačić, 2004), the behavioral responses observed when faced with competitive pressures (Bagley, 2006; Davis, 2013; Gewirtz et al., 1995; Jennings, 2010; Ladd & Fiske, 2013; Woods, 2000), and the influence of local conditions and policy contexts (Arsen et al., 1999; Carnoy et al., 2005; Maranto et al., 2000). This research has revealed how perceptions of competition are shaped by context but has not examined whether these perceptions change over time.

Our work builds on those studies to explore how school leader perceptions shifted over two waves of data. We ask:
1) Do charter school leaders perceive competition?
a. If so, what principal (e.g., gender, experience) and school characteristics (e.g., demographics, context) are related to perceived competition?
2) What factors influence competitive responses taken by leaders?
3) How, if at all, do leaders’ perceptions of competition (amount of competition reported, specific competitors) change over time?

The quantitative data for our study come from multiple sources, including two waves of a unique survey of charter school leaders in Arizona (Wave 1, N=134; Wave 2, N=117), administrative data from the Arizona Department of Education, and the Common Core of Data. Our data are cleaned, wave 1 analyses are completed, and wave 2 analyses are in progress. Seee Table 1 for a description of our sample. We will conduct regression analyses to examine predictors of overall perceived competition and competitive relationships between schools. We also explore patterns in schools’ reported responses to competition (e.g., marketing, improving instruction). Finally, and the most novel contribution in this work, we will compare competitor perceptions in waves 1 and 2, both overall and for the subset of schools that responded in both waves (N=45). We also use interviews with a subset of respondents in waves 1 (N=28) and 2 (N=24) to help interpret our results.

Our preliminary results indicate overall perceptions of competition, i.e., the extent to which the respondent indicated they competed for students with other schools (a little, some, or a lot), significantly increased from wave 1 to wave 2, for the 45 schools that were in both waves, from a mean of 1.36 to 3 (p<0.001). While we have analyzed and reported results from wave 1 elsewhere, we will build on that work to examine differences between wave 1 and 2.

Despite ongoing emphasis on the competitive effects of school choice in policy discourses, we still understand little about the dynamics of competition, which has important implications for equitable access to schools. Our study builds on prior work by examining whether and how perceived competition changes over time, and the associated changes in reported practices.

Authors

• Benjamin M. Creed, Northern Illinois University
  Presenting Author

• Huriya Jabbar, University of Southern California
  Non-Presenting Author

• Wajiha Saqib, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author