Political action committees at the state level: Contributions to education

This paper examines campaign contributions from educational political action committees (PACs). Using a new and unique data set of political activity of the educational PACs across the fifty states and throughout the decade of the nineties, the authors describe the contributions' patterns of these groups. The authors argue that teachers occupy a low cost position for organizing. Approximately 90 percent of educational PAC spending is on behalf of teachers' organizations. Generalized least squares analysis of the state-year variance in contributions indicate that competition between teachers' groups and other education interest groups is a significant factor that influences the educational PACs expenditures.