Watch School Boards Are Broken But Voters Can Help

School boards greatly influence how schools operate, what and how kids learn, and other issues that families must contend with. We spoke with Jonathan Collins, Associate Professor of Politics and Education, whose research focuses on school-based democratic innovation. Collins is also the Associate Director of TC’s Center for Educational Equity, and the Director of the new School Board and Youth Engagement Lab. Tags: K-12 Education Education Leadership Education Policy K-12 Education Departments: Education Policy & Social Analysis School boards, especially elected ones, are the bedrock of our democracy, yet they're critically overlooked and underserved.

These vital, community-led institutions, designed to give citizens a direct say in local education, are essential for healthy communities. My colleague, Dr. Julie Corbett from Corbett Education Consulting and a former school board member says we are going to have to make some changes to ensure that school boards are able to act as pillars of... "Despite the immense value of school boards, their elections suffer from abysmally low turnout, their mostly volunteer members lack sufficient research-based training, and members face increasing threats to their personal security. If we want a truly representative and functional democracy we must change this with an investment of time and money. "As former school board member, Dr.

Kim Bridges, aptly states in a forthcoming podcast, ‘School boards are our most proximate democracies.’ Since their inception in Massachusetts 1647 and formalization in 1826, school boards have been a community-led approach to governing... Many school board members don’t plan on running for office, and often run and serve in an effort to build solutions for other families that they experienced – such as navigating the often-daunting special... "While we strive to keep schools ‘apolitical,’ education is inherently political. School boards, whether partisan or nonpartisan, are also frequently caught in the clash of political ideologies and shifting state and national policies. In its 14th year, this show is a series of expertly facilitated conversations with world experts in a variety of disciplines. These conversations illuminate problems, issues and solutions faced and considered by aspiring and veteran leaders.

Locally elected school boards are having a moment, though not the one their supporters might want. School boards, formerly viewed by many as innocuous, have come roaring to life with fights over race and gender identity, pandemic-related policies, and social-emotional learning. School-board races, often derided for abysmally low turnout, now appear to be ground zero for the nation’s culture wars. Past efforts to dismantle school boards were largely unsuccessful, in part because American citizens value them as a hallmark of local control and in part because alternatives like mayoral control have yielded mixed results. Now, many Americans are rightly disturbed by the fierce politicization of school-board meetings, making the time ripe for critics to update old arguments (see “Lost at Sea,” forum, Fall 2004) for a new era. Enter political scientist Vladimir Kogan, who asserted in the headline of his recent Education Next article (“Locally Elected School Boards Are Failing,” Summer 2022) that locally elected school boards are failing.

Kogan highlights several significant problems with school governance, including the insufficient responses of many school boards to persistent achievement gaps. He also alerts readers to the fact that many school boards fail to reflect the demographics or interests of the communities they serve. Kogan isn’t wrong on these counts. But are locally elected school boards actually failing? Answering this question isn’t merely a matter of determining whether they ensure the academic outcomes Kogan prizes. It also requires us to examine the democratic purpose and practices of school boards.

Taking into account the mission, stakeholders, and procedures of public schools and their governing boards—the what, who, and how of their activity—we believe that publicly elected school boards continue to play a vital role... In making the case against locally elected school boards, Kogan revives the argument made by John Chubb and Terry Moe that politics allow “the moral concerns of adults” to interfere with the “the educational... In an ideal world, then, school-board elections would elevate candidates who prioritize “student academic outcomes” and would punish candidates who do not. But, as Kogan notes, “there’s little indication that voters use elections to hold school boards accountable” based on measured student outcomes. Instead, incumbency and the endorsement of teachers unions have a greater effect on election results. That, he argues, is how we know that locally elected school boards are failing.

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