Watch School Boards Are Broken But Voters Can Help School Boards

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. The jump from theoretical discussions about democracy in high school to the reality of absentee ballots, closed primaries, and registration deadlines can feel abrupt, youth advocates say. And that can make some would-be first-time voters reluctant to engage with a fundamental component of democracy.

Organizers pushing for a more gradual on-ramp to participation in the electoral process scored a major win this month when Newark, N.J., became the latest city to allow 16-year-olds to vote in local school... Civics-minded advocacy groups like Generation Citizen have pushed for lowering the voting age for local elections so that young people can take more incremental steps to introduce themselves to the voting process. They’ve also pushed for schools to teach older students more about the practical process of voting so they are better prepared for their first time at the ballot box. Registering, heading to the polls, and casting a ballot the first time can feel like setting out on a long road trip without ever learning how to start or steer a car, said Yenjay... “Voting right now is treated as: Before you’re 18, you’re just not competent at all,” said Hu, a senior in nearby Westfield, N.J. “And then as soon as you turn 18, you’re expected to know everything about the electoral process, everything about elected officials and government.

We don’t really think that is a constructive way to create educated voters in the future.” To help journalists contextualize coverage of school board elections, we spotlight research on who votes in these elections, the role of teachers unions and how new board members can influence school segregation, funding and... This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You are free to republish this piece both online and in print, and we encourage you to do so with the embed code provided below. We only ask that you follow a few basic guidelines. by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource May 28, 2024

School board elections have grown increasingly politicized in recent years as conservative politicians and advocacy organizations push to restrict how public schools address issues related to race, gender and sexuality. 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. School board meetings across the country have become the breeding ground for heated politicized debates. Photo courtesy of Flickr. Amid the clamor of shouting voices and pointed fingers in school boardrooms across the country, someone sits quietly in the back, forgotten—the student. Once an environment for cordial and constructive discourse and community engagement, school board meetings have since become a breeding ground for heated politicized debates that distract from the primary focus on how to better... The spaces where educational directions are decided have lost focus and regressed into arenas of conflict, leaving behind teachers and students.

Heated debates on book bans, critical race theory, and LGTBQ+ rights have consumed hours of time at public meetings and dominated rhetoric in school board races across the country. While these may seem like important discussions for schools to have, the debates have morphed into harmful political attacks that target marginalized groups and inclusive curricula. While many of the most controversial issues that school boards have faced lately are connected to broader positions taken by political movements associated with one of the major political parties, they can often leave... The increasingly divisive and polarizing climate of school board meetings has left scars in communities, undermined confidence in public education, and created an unsafe learning environment for students who need the most support. Reforms are necessary not only to help heal the deep divisions festering in this country but also to restore and strengthen the process by which members of a community can work together on changes... A 2023 survey by UCLA’s Institute for Democracy Education and Access of 467 school superintendents revealed that this sort of conflict has financial ramifications, too.

Researchers estimated that districts across the country spent $3.2 billion in the 2022-23 school year responding to “culturally divisive conflicts,” with the majority of this expense resting on the shoulders of districts with high...

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