1

A Tale of Two Roles: Measuring Political Efficacy in Homeschool Parent-Teachers

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of political efficacy in homeschool

parents’ educational choices and advocacy and to examine links between political efficacy

beliefs and homeschooling educational practices. Of particular interest to this study are the

position and power of the public to bring about changes in education policy. Parents, as members

of the public who are also responsible for the upbringing of their children, occupy a unique

position as constituents of public schools and education policy advocates. Public school teachers,

conversely, are “street level bureaucrats” (Lipsky, 1980): de facto policymakers who decide how

and if policy mandates are implemented in their classrooms. When parents opt to homeschool,

they also elect to occupy the two roles of parent and teacher simultaneously. The homeschool

community has been remarkably successful in bringing its policy priorities to fruition –

homeschooling was legalized nationwide in just 30 years when it had previously been illegal in

every state. Sommerville (2005) describes this as “one of the great unpublicized political

campaigns in U.S. civic history” (p. 135). Such agentic political action appears to be rooted not

in withdrawal from schools and school politics – the accusation sometimes levied against

homeschool communities – but in a uniquely efficacious set of political beliefs and actions that

demand further attention from education researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.

Human agency beliefs, including self-efficacy beliefs, are at the center of motivation and

success (Bandura, 1995). Political efficacy comprises an individual’ s belief in his or her

capacity to understand, navigate, and ultimately influence the political system. The objectives of

this study are twofold: to apply a new measure of political efficacy to an educational context for

the first time and to investigate links between the political efficacy of homeschooling teaching

2

parents and autonomy-promoting instructional practices. The outcomes of this study stand to

contribute to a broader conversation about the roles of different constituencies and their exercise

of political will within school systems. Specifically, this study contributes to the rapidly evolving

conversation about the power of parents to influence the education of their children and how

school governance structures invite or inhibit the expression of political will in schools systems.

The results of this study, then, have substantive implications for both public school and

homeschooling communities. Homeschooling advocates have experienced tremendous success

as national education policies have shifted such that homeschooling is widely accepted as a valid

educational choice. If political efficacy proves to be an important predictor of successful

education policy advocacy, than the homeschool community has much to teach the broader

education community about how agency beliefs combine with efficacious political and collective

action in order to bring about positive changes for all students.

Literature Review

We turn now to the extant literature that provides substantive support for the

investigations undertaken in this study, including a brief overview of school governance as a

reform tool and the role of homeschooling within that history. This section also includes research

that addresses the construct of political efficacy, autonomy-promoting instructional practices,

and the influence of parents. We conclude this section with the research questions this study is

designed to address.

Governance as a reform tool

School governance is almost endlessly complex. As school oversight and policy come

under the umbrella of other, often general-purpose officials’ jurisdiction (governors and mayors,

3

for example), nearly every aspect of schooling is somehow integrated into another government

branch, agency, or funding stream. For instance, school food programs are the purview of the

United States Department of Agriculture; Title I, which governs resource allocation to

disadvantaged populations, falls under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; and Title

IX, which oversees the equitable distribution of resources by gender, falls under the Office of

Civil Rights, just to name a few.

Historically, governance changes served as instruments of reform because changes in

government reroute power away from those who hold power and into the hands of those who

might be able to bring about the desired changes. Mintrom (2001) asserts that this redirection

might take one of two pathways. Centrifugally oriented reforms are those that decentralize power

and redistribute school governance to multiple stakeholders. Centripetal reforms, on the other

hand, are those that centralize power and streamline the number of decision-makers, usually as

an effort to reduce bureaucracy and establish a uniform vision of educational operations.

Centrifugal reforms include charter schools (and, by extension, independent operators and

charter management organizations), home education, and vouchers. Centripetal reforms include

what Mintrom terms the “standard setting” (which refers to traditional public district school

model) and top-down takeovers. Additional examples in the category of centripetal reforms

include mayoral control and appointed boards. Home education, as a centrifugal reform,

relocates decision-making power away from education policy authorities and into the hands of

parents, who may be more likely to know their students’ educational needs more intimately and

also be capable of advocating solely for the needs of their own students amidst a complicated and

diverse education system. This centrifugal reform, then, offers homeschooled students a degree

4

of attention, advocacy, and individualization they may not otherwise experience in the standard

schools etting.

There are numerous arguments for centripetal reforms, or those that centralize power. They

may potentially depoliticize education by placing educational control under the authority of a

single elected official, reduce bureaucratization, or increase funding for education by funneling it

through a single political agency rather than filtering it through a series of federal, state, and

local agencies (Henig, 2009). Other benefits of centralization as reform include electoral

accountability (Kirst & Bulkley, 2003; Kirst, 2007), the ability to marshal political will

(McGlynn, 2010), and clarity of political agenda (Macroff, 2010). However, every argument for

centripetal governance reform inevitably has a centrifugal corollary and, while centralization

may prompt more efficient allocation of political and economic resources, the difficulty arises

when an efficient system restricts the distribution of another good: participatory representation.

Top-down takeovers and regimes centralized around an education executive may be

undemocratic because they “involve a higher authority stepping in to take power away from local

actor who have been legitimately put in place through democratic processes” (Mintrom, 2001, p.

636). Homeschooling, then, is perhaps at the opposite end of the spectrum: it maximizes

democratic participation in that those who elect to participate also assume control of the

operations. Parents, as democratic actors, also assume the responsibility for and control over the

education of their children.

The appeal to democracy is really an appeal to one function of democracy over another –

in this case, representation over efficiency. Stone (2002) addresses the tension between reforms

that mandate centralization and those that rely on decentralization: either “differences among

people…are to be considered the norm” or “equality of distribution of certain crucial resources is

5

considered the norm” (p. 60). Efficiency, says Stone, may be simply expressed as “’ Getting the

most out of a given output’ or ‘achieving an objective for the lowest cost’ ” (p. 61) but the

execution of efficient systems is never as simple. As such, efficiency is not a democratic aim in

and of itself; it is an indicator of how to judge other goals and “it helps us attain more of the

things we value” (p. 61). In the case of school governance, centralization may represent

prioritizing efficiency over representation; while the preservation of locally elected boards may

symbolize the emphasis placed on representation, even at the cost of some efficiency. The myth

at work here is that representation and efficiency operate in a zero-sum game. Stone disagrees

with such a notion and instead suggests that the paths to that shared end must be directed by

political will: “Society can have both equity and efficiency by managing political and policy

choices” (p. 84). Homeschool teaching parents have opted to negotiate that balance for

themselves. For the broader homeschool community, managing political and policy choices has

meant unprecedented advocacy and, ultimately, dramatic shifts in law and perceptions of

legitimacy. Individual homeschool families have chosen to mange political and policy choices by

assuming more direct control over not only the governance of their children’ s’ education but

also the curricular and academic decisions.

Chester Finn and Michael Petrilli (2013) acknowledge that American school governance

has largely failed to carry out its intended purpose: to shepherd and protect student achievement.

They attribute the continued academic failure of American students to “our flawed, archaic, and

inefficient system for organizing and operating public schools” (p. 21). A key problem is that

schools and the needs of students have changed profoundly in the last fifty years, but

arrangements of school governance are almost exactly the same as they were in the 1800’ s.

Nearly any educational decision is negotiated by at least four levels of bureaucracy from the

6

federal government to the statehouse to the district office and finally the individual school. Finn

and Petrilli acknowledge the argument that such checks and balance provide stability but they

contest that stability has become gridlock, and that the wide variation in educational priorities is

not reason enough to protect the interest of adults throughout the multilayered system. Education

governance has failed because it “yields an education system that pays greater deference to the

desires and interests of its employees, vendors, an other adult beneficiaries than to those of the

families and communities it serves” (p. 22).

However, there is insufficient evidence that any of these reforms have met goals of increased

academic achievement or of other desirable outcomes such as enhanced well being, motivation,

or resilience (see for example: Wong & Shen, 2005; Biniaminov & Glassman, 1983; Carlson,

Lavery, & Witte, 2002). Meanwhile, governance-based reforms continue to proliferate across the

country (e.g. parent empowerment or trigger laws) without any substantive evidence of

effectiveness. Governance-based reforms have been used as a method of reforming schools since

the 1890’ s. In 1939, there were more than 110,000 school districts; today, there are about 14,000

(Berkman & Plutzer, 2005). Henig (2013a, 2013) suggests that governmental consolidation

continues to take place as general-purpose governments and offices absorb responsibility for

school governance. Student academic progress, largely measured by standardized test scores, has

been the chief measure of the success for governance-based school reforms like mayoral control,

state takeovers, charter conversions, and others. In addition to providing a clearer measure of

parent beliefs, a measure of parent political efficacy could serve as an alternate assessment of the

success of governance-based reforms in schools.

Murphy (2012) contends that the rise of homeschooling over the past three decades

represents a microcosm of the larger conflicts in education policy and practice. In particular,

7

homeschooling represents a clash between two factions in education: there are those who

advocate for more state power, increased centralization, and more rigorous professionalism

among educators and there are those who may be suspicious of reformers and reject the notion

that only professionals can orchestrate a high quality educational experience for students. The

second part, suggests Murphy, values individual liberty over heightened regulation and family

responsibility over state control. While this may describe many homeschool advocates and

practitioners, it also echoes the conversations happening around other education governance

reforms, including charter schools, voucher programs, online schools, and turnaround models of

schooling. Perhaps because homeschooling represents the broader educational conversations

around school governance reforms, it is especially important to understand why the

homeschooling movement has been so successful not only in legalizing the practice but also

gaining mainstream legitimacy as an educational choice. Even more critically, education policy

research must attend to the questions of what attitudes and beliefs held by homeschoolers

promote such successful advocacy activity and whether their efficacy beliefs, individually and

collectively, translate to favorable outcomes for students.

Political Efficacy

School governance is a major focus of public policy, and parents are often cited as levers

in debates around educational governance. In the case of home schooling, parents have opted to

be the major governors of their children’ s education. Efforts of home school communities have

been met with considerable and rapid success in the United States. This is an education-focused

community that has successfully navigated political mores to great success – used the

democratic tools at their disposal to exercise democratic rights to “pursuit of liberty for

themselves and their posterity”. The problem of parent-school involvement remains a quandary

8

for the broader K-12 education community so educators, policymakers, parents, and guardians

would benefit from understanding how home schoolers understand their position as actors within

the policy process. The aim of this study is to validate a measure of political efficacy within a

population of parents and guardians who have opted to educate their children at home, to

examine differences across traditional public school teachers and home school teaching parents,

and evaluate whether diverse individuals (who traditionally report low political efficacy) in the

home school community report political efficacy differently.

A growing body of literature suggests that agency beliefs are integral to human success in

many sectors, and especially in education (Bandura, 1982). Indeed, “self-generated

processes…not only contribute to the meaning and valence of most external influences, but they

also function as important proximal determinants of motivation and action” (Bandura, 1989, p.

1175). Self-efficacy beliefs are one category of self-generated process and Bandura goes on to

define self-efficacy as future-oriented judgments about one’ s ability to organize skills and

activities to bring about a desired outcome (1994). Research on self-efficacy has proliferated

dramatically across disciplines and continues to demonstrate that self-efficacy is critical

antecedent to many positive outcomes in health, sports performance, political participation, and

academic achievement (Bandura, 1997).

The political science concept of political efficacy is closely related to the psychological

concept of self-efficacy, although the two developed independently within their separate fields of

origin (Morrell, 2005). “Simply put, efficacy is the citizens’ perceptions of powerfulness (or

powerlessness) in the political realm” (Morrell, 2003, p. 589). Each concept deals with

expectations of one’ s own competency to perform a needed set of behaviors (Bandura, 1994).

Political science researchers have continuously refined the measure of political efficacy and

9

identified a series of important associations with other political and demographic variables.

Importantly, however, political efficacy has not been broadly applied to educational contexts.

The question of political efficacy, then, requires empirical attention, especially as it relates to a

specific domain like educational governance. Political efficacy is comprised of two linked

beliefs: belief in one’ s own competence to participate in democratic tasks and belief in the

responsiveness of the governmental system to hear and respond to citizens’ wishes. Decreased

political efficacy results directly from beliefs about one’ s own inability to sufficiently

understand and participate in political mores or reduced confidence in the weight of one’ s

activity within a political system. The first component, which taps into beliefs about the citizen’ s

own ability to participate, is termed internal political efficacy (IPE) while the beliefs about the

government’ s responsiveness is defined as external political efficacy (EPE). Political efficacy

has important consequences for political beliefs and behavior, and therefore for the function and

inclusivity of deliberative democratic practice. Morrell (2005) states the importance of political

efficacy by describing what happens to a democracy in its absence: “Without a sense of internal

political efficacy, citizens will likely become apathetic about, indifferent to and disengaged from

the democratic process” (p. 50).

In a mere thirty years, homeschool advocates led a massive revolution. During the

1970’ s, home education was illegal in every U. S. state. By 1993, it was legal nationwide.

Somerville (2005) calls this shift “one of the great unpublicized political campaigns in U.S. civic

history” and “a political miracle” (p. 135). While regulation and oversight vary dramatically

across states, the fact remains that homeschoolers undertook and carried out a remarkable

democratic feat, using a number of “tactics” (Cooper, 2007, p. 9) to exercise their political will.

Even as the homeschool community grows more diverse in terms of race, religion, region, and

10

socioeconomic status (Jeub, 1994; Lyman, 1998), it remains a powerful and organized political

force capable of rapid and effective mobilization amidst complex and bureaucratic policy

streams. Homeschoolers have successfully exercised their political power to effect change in

local, regional, and national settings and their activity could be instructive to other parent and

advocacy interests attempting to effect change at the level of education policy.

In the broader P-12 community, meanwhile, parental involvement is a difficult issue.

Parent involvement in their children’ s education is unquestionably beneficial for students

(Fagan, Wright, Pinchevsky, 2014) yet sorely lacking in schools, especially where the students

are categorized as either low-income or minority status. Most districts provide some democratic

mechanism through which constituents express their political will regarding education policy,

such as school board elections, but these are conventionally under-attended and thus dramatically

underrepresent poor and minority enrollment in public schools. Homeschoolers have been able to

mobilize, navigate political mores, and leverage their power and size in order to change laws

nationwide. State by state, homeschoolers are still working to change local regulations so that

they are more favorable to alternately educated students. Such a gap in the political activity and

success of political advocacy demands attention. The objective of this inquiry is to explore

political efficacy of parents as a construct that provides additional insight into the democratic

beliefs and activity of homeschool parent, which holds promise for understanding, evaluating,

and promoting political efficacy in other constituencies in and around schools.

Promoting Autonomy in Home Schools

According to Ryan and Deci (2000), a set of conditions must be met in order for an

individual to experience enhanced motivation and optimal human development. Optimal

motivational conditions are met when individuals experience support both individually and

11

environmentally that meets their needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. While

several factors have been empirically associated with student motivation, including self-efficacy

beliefs, Reeve (2000) finds that various teaching styles may either support students’ autonomy,

thereby addressing students’ psychological needs and contributing to their academic motivation

or teaching styles (which are typically oriented toward control and custodialism) may undermine

student autonomy needs. Autonomy-supporting instructional practices opportunities for choice

and feedback, providing rationale for instructional activities, avoiding the use of controlling

language, and highlighting student success. Practices that undermine student-autonomy include

punishment and excessive use of extrinsic motivational strategies (see: Katz & Assor, 2007;

Reeve & Jang, 2006; Deci, Spiegel, Ryan, Koestner, & Kauffman, 1982).

Few empirical studies focused on autonomy-promoting instructional practices have been

carried in home education contexts. While limited in scope and in power, a few qualitative

studies of homeschool teaching parents suggest that autonomy-promotion among students is a

priority (Wyatt, 2008; Stevens, 2001) and that homeschool parents organize their schooling

environment around the goal of autonomy support. These studies did not explicitly detail the

kinds of instructional practices used in these home schools or provide any observed or

correlational evidence of its success. A study by Cai and colleagues (2002) is an important

exception in two ways: it provides an empirical evaluation of autonomy-promoting instructional

practices and it offers a distinct contrast to the qualitative findings. In this study, the authors used

the Problems in School (PIS) survey tool to measure the autonomy-supportive orientations of

both homeschool teaching parents and public school teachers. The public school teachers’

motivational orientations did not differ much, homeschool teaching parents were significantly

more oriented toward control than autonomy support in their teaching practices. Importantly, this

12

particular sample of homeschooling parents chose to homeschool based on their religious

convictions. The authors suggest that their orientation toward control may have been associated

with an agenda based on the precepts of that religion rather than an educational choice based on

opportunities for student choice, internal motivation, and independence.

There is no consensus in the literature about how homeschooling parents choose

instructional practices in order to enhance their students’ academic engagement. However, the

efficacy of teachers has been linked to increased student engagement, resilience, persistence

when faced with challenges, and academic achievement (Bandura, 1994). It stands to reason,

then, that parents who exhibit efficacy for homeschooling, political efficacy, or a combination of

both may be oriented to autonomy-supportive instructional practices, which then contribute to

students’ academic engagement, motivation, and achievement.

Research Questions

The research questions for this study were as follows:

1. Does the construct of political efficacy emerge as valid and reliable in a home

education context?

2. How is political efficacy associated with other agency beliefs (efficacy for

homeschooling) and motivations (motivation for homeschooling, basic needs

satisfaction) among homeschool teaching parents?

3. How is political efficacy of teaching parents associated with autonomy-promoting

teaching practices and student academic engagement in home schools?

13

Analytic Method

Data for this study were collected in conjunction with a larger study on agency beliefs of

teachers in traditional and choice public schools. An initial sample of about 90 teachers was

recruited to pilot a measure of teacher political efficacy. That measure underwent a number of

face validity checks (including cognitive interviews and field tests) with educators in a variety of

educational settings, including online, higher education, homeschool, charter, and public school

contexts. Exploratory factor analyses showed high reliability and validity scores for the measure

the measure, indicating unidimensionality for both Teacher Internal Political Efficacy (factor

scores ranging from .78 to .88, alpha = .921, n=78) and Teacher External Political Efficacy

(factor scores ranging from .60 to .89, alpha = .834, n=78). Such strong scores suggest this

measure is useful for further study in new contexts.

Data Collection

The sample for this study has been recruited using the listserv of an organization that

coordinates homeschool conventions across the nation. The listserv contains more than 50,000

active users. Researchers purchased an e-blast to recruit respondents, which includes a dedicated

email, as well as a coordinated social media push on FaceBook, Twitter, and GooglePlus. The

audience for these e-blasts is comprised largely of homeschooling parent-teachers, although

other advocates and vendors are also included in the listserv. In order to conduct analyses

focused only on the political efficacy of homeschooling teaching parents, we have included in

the survey tool a question that asks about the role of the respondent. Only data from current

teaching parents are included in the analyses. The e-blast provides potential respondents with a

link to complete the survey anonymously on Qualtrics. As data collection is ongoing at the time

of this writing, it is not yet possible to state the size of the sample.

14

Measures

Demographic variables, including respondents’ age, race, gender, income, education

level, martial status, number of children, grade levels taught, years of homeschooling, and

motivations for homeschooling were collected from all survey respondents.

Teaching parent political efficacy. Teacher political efficacy was comprised of nine

items; four items assess external political efficacy and five items measure internal political

efficacy. Teachers and parents reported their attitudes regarding political efficacy using a Likert-

type item scored from one to six (1=strongly disagree, 6=strongly agree). Sample items include,

“I know where to find information about educational policy issues that are important to me”

(internal) and “I generally assume school politics are fair and school politicians to do the best by

teachers like me” (external).

Efficacy for homeschooling. In order to assess teaching parent efficacy for the tasks

associated with homeschooling, Bell (2013) adapted a measurement tool developed by Deci and

colleagues, who pioneered work in self-determination theory (Williams & Deci, 1996; Williams,

Freedman, & Deci, 1998). This 4-item instrument repeatedly demonstrates high internal validity

with alpha values consistently above .80. Sample items include, “I feel confient in my ability to

homeschool my children” and “I am able to achieve my goals for homeschooling my children.”

Bell’ s adaptation for use in homeschooling contexts includes a Likert-like response scale from 1

(not at all true) to 7 (very true).

Basic needs satisfaction. Central to self-determination theory is the notion that every

person needs to have a set of basic needs met and those needs include autonomy, relatedness, and

competence. In order to measure how these needs are met among homeschooling teaching

parents, Bell (2013) adapted a series of three subscales, each of which deals with on of the needs

15

associated with self-determination theory. The 21-item measurement tool includes a Likert-like

response scale that ranges from 1 (not at all true) to 7 (very true). Sample items include, “I feel

like I have a lot of freedom to decide how to homeschool my child” (autonomy), “I really like the

people I interact with through homeschooling,” (relatedness), and “Often, I do not feel very

competent in homeschooling” (competence, reverse scored).

Parents’ perceptions of academic engagement. Bell (2013) adapted Reeve’ s (2002) scale

that measures academic engagement by identifying a series of cognitive and behavioral clues

indicative of student autonomy and engagement. This tool contains eight items and has a 5-point,

Likert-like response scale that ranges from 1 to 5. Directed toward parents, the tool asks teaching

parents to judge their students engagement by asking about several cognitive states or habits

associated with engagement, some of which include persistence, initiative, and enjoyment.

Sample items include, “How interested is the student in his/her school studies?” and, “How often

does this student give up when he/she encounters a challenge in his/her studies?” Higher scores

indicate higher quality of student academic engagement and the scores for this measure indicated

strong validity and reliability (alpha = .88).

Analysis

The present study is ongoing, but has two purposes. The first is to subject the measure of

political efficacy to more rigorous psychometric testing in a broader and more diverse sample of

respondents. Each of the two subscales (internal political efficacy and external political efficacy)

have previously demonstrated unidimensionality and strong factor structure, so confirmatory

factor analysis will reveal whether the properties of the measure bear up under additional

scrutiny and whether home school parents – who also serve as their children’ s educators –

report political efficacy similarly to those who work in public schools. After data collection has

16

been completed, we will undertake a series of regression analyses and structural equation models

(SEM) in order to test multiple hypotheses about the direction and strength of associations

among political efficacy, efficacy and motivation for homeschooling, and autonomy-promoting

practices.

Discussion

We believe that this study has important implications for research, practice, and policy.

Political efficacy is a construct not previously applied to an education context, so this study is

positioned to offer important insights on why different school system constituents, including

home school parents, act as they do. Importantly, this quantitative study looks at a unique set of

variables that links parent attitudes toward the educational policy system with concrete

instructional practices – an investigation that has not yet been undertaken in the extant

literature. This study is also unique in that its sample of respondents is comprised exclusively of

homeschool teaching parents and there is no comparison group of public school teachers. Again,

this is a novel contribution to the literature addressing homeschooling and suggests that the

homeschool community is a valid sample of interest for scholarly investigations and that the

conclusions of such studies can offer substantive implications for the broader education policy

and education practice contexts.

Homeschool parent political efficacy may offer some insights into the broader questions

of teacher representation, parent involvement, and public voice in school systems. The critique

that homeschoolers absent themselves from systems of public education appears contrary to

reality; they have instead utilized those very structures to effect change. This study is part of the

broader reconsidering of the homeschool community in light of the increased scholarship around

political efficacy and its impact on success broadly, and in education specifically. The particular

17

case of the homeschool parent is an invaluable tool to help better understand how school

governance systems can encourage political efficacy and the expression of political will among

all constituents.

18

References

Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist, 37, 122-

147. Bandura, A. (1993). Perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning. Educa-

tional Psychologist, 28(2), 117-148.

Bandura, A. (1994). Self-efficacy. In V. S. Ramachaudran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 71-81). New York: Academic Press. (Reprinted in H. Friedman [Ed.], Encyclopedia of mental health. San Diego: Academic Press, 1998).

Bandura, A. (1995). Exercise of personal and collective efficacy in changing societies. In A.

Bandura (Ed.), Self-efficacy in changing societies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York:

Freeman.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman.

Bell, D. (2013). Types of home schools and need-support for achievement motivation (Doctoral

dissertation). Retrieved from

http://digital.library.temple.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/p245801coll10/id/214758/rec/4

Berkman, M. and Plutzer, E. (2005). Ten thousand democracies. Washington, DC: Georgetown

University Press.

Biniaminov, I. and Glasman, N. S. (1983). School determinants of student achievement in

secondary education. American Educational Research Journal, 20 (2), 251-268.

Cai, Y., Reeve, J., & Robinson, D. (2002). Home schooling and teaching style: Comparing the

19

motivating styles of home school and public school teachers. Journal of Educational

Psychology, 94(2), 372– 380.

Deci, E., Spiegel, N., Ryan, R. M., Koestner, R., & Kauffman, M. (1982). Effects of

performance standards on teaching styles: Behavior of controlling teachers. Journal of

Educational Psychology, 74, 852– 859.

Fagan, A., Wright, E., & Pinchevky, G. (2014). The protective effects of neighborhood collective

efficacy on adolescent substance use and violence following exposure to violence.

Journal of Youth Adolescence, 43, 1498-1512.

Henig, J. (2013). The end of exceptionalism in American education: The changing politics of

school reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Henig, J. (2013a). The rise of education executives in the white house, state house, and mayor’ s

office. In P. F. Manna & P. McGuinn Eds.), Education governance for the 21st century:

Overcoming the structural barriers to school reform. Washington, D.C.: Brookings.

Henig, J. R. (2009). Mayors, governors, and presidents: The new education executives and the

end of educational exceptionalism. Peabody J. Educ. Peabody Journal of Education, 84(3),

283-299.

Jeub, C. (1994). Why parents choose to homeschool. Educational Leadership, 52, 50-52.

Katz, I., & Assor, A. (2007). When choice motivates and when it does not. Educational

Psychology Review, 19, 429– 442.

Kirst, M. W. (2007). Mayoral control of schools: Concepts, tradeoffs, and outcomes:

Commission on School Governance.

Kirst, M. W., & Bulkley, K. E. (2003). Mayoral Takeover: the different directions taken

in different cities. In J. G. Cibulka & W. L. Boyd (Eds.), A Race Against Time:

The crisis in urban schooling. Westport, CT: Praeger.

20

Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service.

Russel Sage: New York.

Lyman, I. (1998). Homeschooling: Back to the future? Cato Policy Analysis (Policy Analysis

No. 294). Washington, DC: Cato Institute. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No.

415 325)

McGlynn, A. (2010). Identifying the Causes of Mayoral Control in Urban Public School

Systems. Urban Education, 45(5), 661-686.

Morrell, M. E. (2003). Survey and experimental evidence for a reliable and valid

measure of internal political efficacy. Public Opinion Quarterly 67: 589– 602.

Morrell, M. E. (2005). ‘Deliberation, democratic decision- making and internal political efficacy.

Political Behavior 27 (1): 49– 69. Murphy, J. (2012). Homeschooling in America: Capturing the Assessing the Movement.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin (Sage).

Petrilli, M., & Finn, C. (2013). The failures of U.S. Education Governance Today. In P. F.

Manna & P. McGuinn (Eds.), Education governance for the 21st century: Overcoming

the structural barriers to school reform. . Washington, D.C.: Brookings

Reeve, J. ( 2002). Self-determination theory applied to educational settings. In E.L. Deci & R.M.

Ryan (Eds.). Handbook of self-determination theory research (pp. 183-203). Rochester,

NY: University of Rochester Press.

Reeve, J. & Jang, H. (2006). What teachers say and do to support students’ autonomy during a

learning activity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 209– 218.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000a). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and

new directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, (2), 54– 67.

21

Somerville, S. W. (2005). Legal rights for homeschool families. In B. S. Cooper (Ed.),

Homeschooling in full view: A reader (pp. 135-149). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

Stevens, M. L. (2001). Kingdom of children: Culture and controversy in the homeschooling

movement. Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology;. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press.

Stone, D. (2002). Policy paradox: The art of political decision making. New York, NY:

W. W. Norton and Company.

Wong, K, and Shen, F. (2005). When mayors lead urban schools: Towards developing a

framework to assess the effects of mayoral takeover of urban districts. In Howell

(Ed.), Besieged, (pp. 81– 101). Washington, D.C.: Brookings.

Wood, R. and Bandura, A. (1989). Impact of conceptions of ability on self-regulatory

mechanisms and complex decision-making. Journal of Personality and Psychology, 56

(3), 407-415.

Wyatt, Gary. (2008). Family ties : Relationships, socialization, and home schooling. Lanham,

MD: University Press of America.