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- All Subjects: COVID-19 (Disease)
- All Subjects: Education -- Political aspects
- All Subjects: Students--Political activity
- Creators: Driesen, Frederick
- Creators: Schugurensky, Daniel, 1958-
- Peer-reviewed: Peer-reviewed
- Resource Type: Text
- Status: Published
Does school participatory budgeting (SPB) increase students’ political efficacy? SPB, which is implemented in thousands of schools around the world, is a democratic process of deliberation and decision-making in which students determine how to spend a portion of the school’s budget. We examined the impact of SPB on political efficacy in one middle school in Arizona. Our participants’ (n = 28) responses on survey items designed to measure self-perceived growth in political efficacy indicated a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 1.46), suggesting that SPB is an effective approach to civic pedagogy, with promising prospects for developing students’ political efficacy.
With more than 19 million confirmed COVID-19 cases across the United States1 and over 500,000 in Arizona as of December 2020, the ongoing pandemic has had devastating impacts on local, national, and global economies. Prior to the pandemic (February 2020), based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the unemployment rate in Arizona was 6.5%, compared to 4.9% at the national level.3 Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020), the United States has experienced striking increases in the unemployment rate, reaching 13.2% in April. Similarly, in Arizona, the unemployment rate jumped to over 13.5% in April. The unemployment rates have since declined both nationally and in Arizona but remain higher compared to February 2020. In November 2020 (the most recent data available), the national unemployment rate was 6.7%, while in Arizona the rate was 7.8%—the 10th highest unemployment rate among all U.S. states.