Research
My research examines how educational institutions shape democratic participation and how citizens shape the governance of public education. I focus on the politics of education governance, administrative ease in democratic participation, and the role of schools in producing civic engagement.
Across projects, I combine original data, such as school board election exit polls and web-scraped district information, with large administrative datasets to understand how institutional design shapes citizens’ access to democratic participation.
Peer-reviewed articles
- Arnzen, Cameron, and Rebecca Jacobsen. 2026. “Neighborhood Democracy: The Politicization of School Boards and Implications for Democratic Education.” AERA Open. Forthcoming.
- Arnzen, Cameron, and Sarah Cohodes. 2026. “Education and the Gender Gap in Presidential Elections.” Electoral Studies.
- Arnzen, Cameron. 2026. “An Education in Devolution? The Political Consequences of the Elimination of the U.S. Department of Education.” Publius: The Journal of Federalism.
- Arnzen, Cameron. 2026. “Education and the Unequal Costs of Voting: Administrative Burdens and Democratic Participation.” Policy Studies Journal.
- Nuñez, M., Cameron Arnzen, H. Rosenstein, J. Collins, and Susan Moffitt. 2026. “Administrative Designs and Access to Political Arenas in Public Education.” Governance 39(1).
- Arnzen, Cameron, and Chloe O’Neill. 2025. “Teaching About Schooling: Integrating Education Politics into Political Science Curricula.” Journal of Political Science Education.
- Brezicha, Kristina, Cameron Arnzen, J. Childs, E. Germain, S. Horsford, D. A. Jenkins, and A. LoBue. 2023. “Political Polarization of Education Politics and Its Implications for Democratic Education.” Peabody Journal of Education 98(5): 467–471.
- Arnzen, Cameron, and David Houston. 2023. “Who Should Control Education Now? Revisiting Preferences for Local Control of Educational Decision-Making.” Peabody Journal of Education 98(5): 526–532.
Book chapters
- Arnzen, Cameron. “Decentralized Spending & Divergent Priorities: State-Level Determinants of Education Investment in the United States.” In Research Handbook on Federalism and Education Policy, ed. Kenneth Wong. Forthcoming 2027.
- Almes, Josh, and Cameron Arnzen. “Political Partisanship in Decentralized Education Systems: The Case of United States School Districts.” In Research Handbook on Federalism and Education Policy, ed. Kenneth Wong. Forthcoming 2027.
- Arnzen, Cameron, and David Houston. “Are Rural Voters Exceptional in a Polarized Education Landscape?” In The ‘Red’ Schoolhouse: Conservative Education Policy in the United States, ed. Chad Lochmiller. Forthcoming.
- Houston, David, Cameron Arnzen, M. Duff, and A. Mangla. “The Politics of Educational System Change.” In The Oxford Handbook on Transforming Systems in Education. In preparation.
Working papers
- “A National Measure of School District Partisanship for the 2016 to 2024 Presidential Elections.” With Josh Almes.
- “Are Rural Attitudes Exceptional in a Polarized Education Landscape?” With David Houston.
- “The Influence of Partisanship in Local School Board Elections: Evidence from Exit Polls in Two States.” With Rebecca Jacobsen.
- “The Politics of Administrative Ease: Access to Special Education Information.” With Lindsey Kaler, Alex Contreras, Bryan Natividad, Niamh Stull, and Susan Moffitt.
- “Governance Disrupted: The Effects of Closing the Department of Education on the Educational Ecosystem.” With Lindsey Kaler, J. Fallon, Niamh Stull, and Susan Moffitt.
- “How Education Drives LGBTQ+ Political Participation.”
- “Defining Citizenship: A Participatory-Content Typology of U.S. State-Level Civic Education Policies.” With Chloe O’Neill.
Ongoing projects
- K–12 school district partisanship (with Josh Almes)
- The politics of administrative ease (with Susan Moffitt and Lindsey Kaler)
- Effects of the dissolution of the Department of Education (with Lindsey Kaler, Niamh Stull, and Susan Moffitt)
- d/Deaf political attitudes and participation
- The effects of colleges on voting (with Isabel McMullen)
- Local endorsements in school board elections (with Ariell Bertrand and Rebecca Jacobsen)
- Contentious school board politics and the democratic education of youth (with Rebecca Jacobsen)
- Defining citizenship: a typology of state civic education policy (with Chloe O’Neill)
Dissertation
Education for Democracy: Essays Interrogating the Relationship Between Education and Voting. Ph.D. in Politics & Education, Columbia University, 2024.
