With more than 13,000 local educational agencies across the nation, school board members make up the largest group of elected leaders.
The report Who’s on Board? School Boards and Political Representation in an Age of Conflict, published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, explores who trustees are and what they believe compared to the communities they serve.
Findings are based on the largest national survey of the group in decades, which included the perspectives of more than 5,000 board members spanning 3,000 districts.
“The findings complicate common narratives. While board members’ partisanship and ideology largely mirror the American public’s — and often align with local voters on hot-button cultural issues — they diverge more on questions of school quality, school choice, and teachers’ unions,” according to the institute. “The report sheds light on the surprising ways representation works, and doesn’t work, in one of the country’s most important democratic institutions.”
Survey results
Responses to the survey showed that two-thirds of trustees (representing seven in 10 students) match the partisan leanings of the districts they serve.
At a national level, the party affiliations and political ideologies of board members are closely aligned with the U.S. public’s, the report found. “Although the vast majority of school board seats are formally nonpartisan, 88 percent of school board members identify with or lean toward one of the two major political parties — identical to the percentage of the U.S. adult population that does so,” it states.
Additionally, students are disproportionally represented by trustees who identify as moderates, liberals and/or Democrats.
In general, board members are far more likely to be white, have a college degree and to have worked as a teacher than of the overall U.S. population. “Weighting the results by district enrollment, however, lessens the racial/ethnic disparities between boards and the population,” according to the report.
Based on national data presented in the report from 2023, 87 percent of trustees identified as white (non-Hispanic) compared to 59 percent of the public, 4 percent were Black (non-Hispanic) compared to 12 percent of the population and 4 percent were Hispanic compared to 19 percent of the public. Weighed by enrollment, those numbers were 77 percent for white (non-Hispanic) board members compared to 59 percent of the public, 9 percent for Black (non-Hispanic) trustees compared to 12 percent of the public and 9 percent for Hispanic trustees compared to 19 percent of the public.
Comparing 2023 to data to 2021, the report noted that “as America has become significantly more Hispanic in recent decades, the proportion of school board members who are Hispanic hasn’t budged, even as the share of members who are Black has fallen. This means that, while the percentage of Americans who are white is down 10 percentage points since 2001, the share of school board members who are white has actually risen during the same period.”
In 2023, 35 percent of trustees had a four-year college degree compared to 21 percent of the public and 46 percent had a postgraduate degree compared to 14 percent of the population.
The prominence of female trustees jumped in the period between 2001 and 2023 from 40 percent to 52 percent, closing the gender gap.
On education issues, trustees’ opinions on high-profile topics can vary from those of the U.S. adults, particularly on subjects such as the quality of local schools (75 percent of board members feel the quality is worthy of an A or B grade compared to 51 percent of adults), support for charter schools (29 percent of board members are supportive versus 38 percent of adults), support for transgender athlete eligibility (30 percent of trustees compared to 20 percent of adults) and positive views of teachers’ unions (37 percent of board members as opposed to 43 percent of adults).
Differences in opinion are typical by political beliefs.
National school quality was largely a point of agreement with 22 percent of board members and adults, respectively, feeling it warrants a grade of A or B.
Considering current polarizing issues including charter schools, book restrictions, an emphasis on racism, transgender bathroom access and athletic eligibility, and teachers’ unions, the report concluded that “only about half of school board members hold positions on polarizing issues that match the positions of the dominant party in their districts, but enrollment-weighted estimates show that the majority of students are represented by board members with views that align with local politics.”
Key takeaways about elections included:
- Overall, most trustees say their elections are generally uncompetitive and nonpartisan and that the influence of teachers’ unions play a minimal role. These dynamics have not changed significantly since the pandemic.
- Larger school districts experience more competitive and partisan elections and teachers’ unions have a significant role.
Read more disaggregated findings and takeaways from researchers in the report.
