High Turnover With Low Accountability - Local School Board Elections in 16 States

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious

Analyzes the most comprehensive dataset on U.S. school board elections across 16 states, showing that nearly half of races are uncontested. Incumbents are reelected in over 80% of cases when they run, yet overall turnover remains high because many incumbents retire instead of seeking another term. The study also finds board turnover is only weakly related to student learning rates. These patterns hold across urban and non-urban districts and across student demographic and local media contexts.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages13

Reading Time33 min

AccessFree to download

High Turnover With Low Accountability: Local School Board Elections in 16 States

Dataset coverage and coding approach

Incumbency, contestation, and reelection patterns

Relationship to student learning outcomes

Implications for local democratic governance

AERA Open January-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–13 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584251349180 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) High Turnover With Low Accountability: Local School Board Elections in 16 States Vladimir Kogan Stéphane Lavertu Ohio State University Zachary Peskowitz Emory University We analyze the most comprehensive dataset on U.S. school board elections. We find that nearly half of races go uncontested and that incumbents are reelected more than 80% of the time when they run. Because many incumbents retire instead of running for another term, however, turnover is high (with 53% of incumbents replaced in a typical election cycle). School board turnover is also only weakly related to student learning rates. These dynamics—high turnover disconnected from school performance challenges—occur across both urban and non-urban districts, regardless of student demographics and local media environments. Together, these results suggest that local democracy produces high leadership churn and minimal incentives to improve student learning, two findings that can inform debates regarding the benefits and costs of local democratic governance. Keywords: school boards, elections, local control, education governance The local school board is the oldest and most common elective office in American democracy.1 Voters directly elect an estimated 50,000 school board members who govern roughly 13,000 school districts educating nearly 50 million students.2 Supporters of the local democratic control of public schools argue that school board elections empower communities and provide an effective way to make important collective decisions about education policy. For example, this is how the National School Boards Association summarizes their value: School board members are the unsung heroes in communities throughout the country. They establish the vision and goals for the public schools in their district, and they set standards for the performance of schools and superintendents. . . . Most school board members are elected by people in their community to represent their values, views, and desires for the public schools in their district. As selected leaders in their community, they consistently communicate with the public to keep community members abreast of challenges, ideas, and progress.3 American voters seem to agree, with polls indicating strong support for their locally elected school boards (see Jacobsen & Saultz, 2012) .4 On the other hand, some critics of America’s education system attribute the failings of public schools—such as low achievement relative to international benchmarks, and large achievement gaps between student groups—to the incentives created by local elections. Such incentives arise from the disproportionate electoral influence of organized interest groups, including teachers unions (e.g., see Anzia, 2013; Hartney, 2022; Moe, 2006) as well as the relatively small share of political and electoral power exercised by lowincome individuals, racial and ethnic minorities, and parents whose children local schools educate (e.g., see Bartanenet al., 2018; Kogan et al., 2021) . In their book Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools, Chubb and Moe (1990) go as far as to argue that “the most fundamental causes [of low academic performance] are far less obvious, given the way schools are commonly understood, and far less susceptible to change” than many education reformers believe.“They are, in fact, the very institutions that are supposed to be solving the problem: the institutions of direct democratic control”(Chubb & Moe, 1990, p. 2) . Yet, despite a growing body of empirical research on school board elections, we have little comprehensive, national information about their dynamics. In particular, ther

FAQs

What does the study find about how often school board races are contested?

Nearly half of school board races go uncontested, indicating limited competition in many elections.

Why is turnover high even though incumbents are often reelected?

Incumbents are reelected more than 80% of the time when they run, but turnover stays high because many incumbents retire instead of running again.

How is school board turnover related to student learning rates?

School board turnover is only weakly related to student learning rates, suggesting limited accountability to student outcomes.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious