More than a half century ago, Daniel Elazar advanced a typology of three types of American political culture by linking historical migrations and religious preferences of people to distinctive locations in the United States. The current study presents an alternative empirical measure of political culture based on county-level Presidential election voting results and explores its potential to distinguish local education systems effectively closing the achievement gap between students economically disadvantaged and their more affluent peers. The results support the theoretical premise that today's American political culture, defined by county-level voters sharing a distinct political ideology, becomes expressed in local educational policies and practices and thereby, affects students' academic success.