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Paul Teske, professor in the Graduate School of Public Affairs, is a young scholar who has already made an impact at the university, state and national level. His research, focused in the areas of education policy and state and local American public policy, has won praise and financial backing from such notable sources as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Daniels Fund. Teske’s commitment to his areas of research as well as his students netted him the 2005 Faculty Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activities.
Coming to the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center in fall 2003, Teske brought a mass of knowledge, experience and networks. “We hired him as a full professor precisely because of his research focus and productivity,” GSPA Dean Kathleen Beatty said in her letter of nomination. “He had a very strong dossier then, and he has not wavered in his time here.”
In education policy, Teske has researched school choice, such as the option of attending a charter schools, private schools and vouchers. “My work has looked at low income parents and, if you give them a choice on charter schools or a general choice, how knowledgeable they become and how well they exercise that choice.”
That research, which began 10 years ago, gathered a great deal of insight. “But it didn’t answer all the questions, and that research needs to continue,” he said. The grant he received from the Gates Foundation through the University of Washington, which houses the Center for Reinventing Public Education,, will enable Teske to gather and analyze parent information to better understand what parents need to make better choices. Armed with this information, “we’ll know what parents are missing right now and how we can develop policies to achieve that.”
In his earlier research, Teske found that despite having a choice in schools, many parents didn’t fully exercise their options. “Sometimes they are single parents, sometimes they don’t have time or don’t believe they really have a choice,” he said. “They haven’t exercised their choice or, at least, exercised it well.”
Teske’s findings show that when parents are researching schools they often don’t look at test scores of quantitative data. “They tend to talk to their friends and their close network. Middle income and upper income families tend to have more well informed networks – people who actually know something about the schools or who work in the schools. Lower income people’s networks tend to be smaller and not as informed.”
In his latest research, Teske is exploring strategies to improve the networking possibilities of low-income people. “One potential strategy is to get more people in the community trained, make them more knowledgeable and then have them connect,” he said. The new research will entail focus groups and surveys of low income parents in Denver – funded by a grant from the Daniels Fund – as well as Milwaukee and Washington, D.C. “These cities have a lot of choices, a lot of charter schools,” he said. “We want to tap into environments where a lot of parents are making a lot of choices. We want to try to get at the gaps in our knowledge and understand better how and why these people aren’t getting this information so we can get it to them.
“The hope is not only to contribute to national policy, but also to the state knowledge.”
In his studies on American policy, Teske has focused on the political science question about the relative power of interest groups versus political institutions about making regulatory policy decisions.
“There are sort of two perspectives on regulation and particularly on state regulation. One is that it’s dominated by powerful interest groups, so that say Qwest would get what they wanted of the state telecommunications, or Xcel would get what they wanted out of electricity regulation or the doctors would get what they want out of the medical regulation. The other perspective is that we have the institutions of government – the legislators, the bureaucracy, organizations that carry out these policies that are supposed to protect the broader public interest and consumers,” Teske said. “I tended to find that the political institutions mattered more than people thought – not that interest groups don’t matter, but they don’t dominate as much as some would say.”
His book, Regulation in the States (Brookings, 2004) is a comprehensive study of state regulation and deregulation. “In the past 20 years or so the federal government has done a lot of deregulation, reducing their oversight whether in environmental regulation or financial regulation or corporate oversight,” he explained. Teske’s research indicates that states have countered that trend. “They’re deciding ‘We want more environmental regulation,’ or ‘We want more consumer protection or more oversight over financial firms.’ ”
That’s surprised some people. “People thought states were not going to take action such as increasing oversight, and they’ve done it pretty well. It’s been pretty effective.”
Sometimes it only takes the actions of one state to influence and change policy for the entire country, Teske said. “If a big state like California has passed tighter emissions standards on carbon dioxide for cars – and that’s something that’s called the California effect –Ford and GM and Toyota aren’t going to produce a ‘California car’ that meets the specifications and another car that doesn’t. In that way, California then forces that standard on the rest of the country.”
In addition to his research, Teske has assumed the duties of PhD program director and as Director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis in the GSPA. He’s had articles published in The Denver Post, Perspective in Politics (March 2005) and Regulation: The CATO Review of Business and Government (Fall 2004) to name a few. “His research and community outreach make him a frequent participant in local and national forums on the topics of study,” Beatty said. “This has increased UCDHSC’s presence and reputation at those forums.
“His presence here has clearly raised the bar for our faculty,” Beatty said.
