Elected School Board Members Most Likely to Be Republicans

Who should have the greatest say over education? Elected school boards, most agree.

Decades of opinion polling show that the public prefers local control of schools to federal or state mandates. From left-leaning parents bent on reducing standardized testing to conservative activists still ruing the loss of school prayer, Americans generally believe that authority over community classrooms should be wielded by community members.

So who controls the elected boards? In spite of their importance, we know relatively little about the composition of these most basic entities of school governance. But a new study published in the American Educational Research Association's open access journal has uncovered a big finding: School board members are disproportionately likely to come from wealthier, whiter, and more educated neighborhoods within districts.

The study, conducted by Vanderbilt University professor Jason Grissom and University of Pennsylvania professor Marc Meredith, suggests that the most advantaged areas of a district — and the schools located within them — receive greater representation than comparatively disadvantaged ones.