a teachers\u2019 union endorsement is uniquely powerful in school board races<\/a>, but Bertrand\u2019s research points to the growing number of actors in school board politics that have become increasingly heated since the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\nThe study is based on a nationwide survey in late 2024 and early 2025 of about 1,000 local school board members representing nearly 700 districts, as well as a review of school board candidate endorsements by unions and other groups as tracked by the political website Ballotpedia across 10 states in 2023.<\/p>\n
The survey shows that parents and organizations such as the PTA or PTO are the most frequently cited active interest groups in board members\u2019 perception of influence, at about double the rate of teachers\u2019 unions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we typically think about interest groups and school board politics, we tend to think about teachers\u2019 unions first and then also education reform organizations, but really the findings of my study suggests that we\u2019re missing a much broader set of actors,\u201d Bertrand said in an interview.<\/p>\n
Those actors include the parent groups, political parties, and partisan organizations such as the conservative Moms for Liberty or the left-leaning Red, Wine & Blue, said Bertrand. Her research focuses on the politics of education, including some of the hot-button culture war issues, such as transgender rights and diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that have come to dominate school board policy and elections in some places.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that teachers\u2019 unions are quite successful when they are involved in school board elections across the country,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you\u2019re a candidate endorsed by a teachers\u2019 union, you tend to win about 70% of the time. \u2026 But they\u2019re not as active as the conventional wisdom would lead you to think.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association declined to comment on the study.<\/p>\n
A slow shift to partisan board elections?<\/p>\n
In some places, contemporary school board politics have become more \u201cpartisan and nationalized,\u201d the study says. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, broke \u201clong-standing norms\u201d by endorsing candidates in local school board elections in his state in 2022 and 2024, it says.<\/p>\n
While school board elections have traditionally been nonpartisan, five states now provide for party labels, and five other states permit such affiliations to appear on ballots, according to Ballotpedia.<\/p>\n
Bertrand said she was troubled by the prospect of a more partisan, and toxic landscape in the local education arena.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are starting to have notes of what we see at the national level, which is \u2018us versus them\u2019 rhetoric and other consequences of political polarization,\u201d Bertrand said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really worried about what that means for governance and the education of students across the country, if school board elections are subject to the pendulum swing that is partisan control.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vladimir Kogan, a political science professor at Ohio State University who has also studied education politics, praised Bertrand\u2019s study as a valuable contribution.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of our problems in education is always that the conversation is dominated by a few very large and unrepresentative school districts,\u201d he said, noting that large districts such as Chicago or Los Angeles have especially powerful teacher\u2019s unions and other well-funded interests.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn most other places, things are a little different,\u201d he said, noting that the paper illuminates how there are other influential groups, such as parents and advocacy groups.<\/p>\n
Kogan cautioned that he thought the paper was providing a snapshot and not a long-range analysis of influence by different groups. And he noted that PTAs and PTOs \u201chave always had a \u2019T\u2019 in their names, for teachers,\u201d but those groups are now at least perceived as primarily representing parents.<\/p>\n
He also notes that unions have traditionally influenced national, state, and local elections in other ways, such as through their traditionally strong connections with the Democratic party.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be premature to conclude that unions have less impact than we expected, or even to have a sense of which groups are actually having a bigger influence, on the outcome of school board elections,\u201d Kogan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The power of teachers\u2019 unions in school board politics may be on the decline, as parents, advocacy groups,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[183,185,184,186],"class_list":["post-308289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion-headlines","tag-lower-merion-news","tag-lower-merion-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}