New Report Surveying School Board Members Offers Nuanced Snapshot but Falls Short on Guidance

BOULDER, CO (March 26, 2026) — A recent Fordham Institute report surveys more than 5,000 school board members across over 3,000 districts, finding they are disproportionately White, college educated, and often current or former teachers, with politics and beliefs that largely mirror both the U.S. public and their local communities.

In their review of Who’s on Board? School Boards and Political Representation in an Age of Conflict, Arizona State University professors Carrie Sampson and Jeanne M. Powers find the report offers a useful snapshot of board composition, political orientation, and perceptions.

A key strength of the report is its use of nationally representative and enrollment-based weighting, yielding a relatively nuanced picture. These data show modest differences between board members and the public on perceptions of school quality, school choice, and teachers’ unions. The report flags these gaps, along with the underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic Americans, as concerns.

Yet the report offers no guidance for addressing them. It also suffers from some leading and ambiguous question wording, raising concerns on findings about charter schools and school quality.

The reviewers caution that the main body of the report is accompanied by an especially problematic Foreword, which misrepresents the study and advances unsubstantiated claims using partisan language, overstating some findings, and ignoring others. For instance, the Foreword frames board members’ relatively lower support for charter schools under a heading asking whether boards are “the most anti-charter groups in the country.”

Overall, Sampson and Powers conclude the results are informative but offer little for policymakers, in large part because the report lacks clear recommendations.

Find the review, written by Carrie Sampson and Jeanne M. Powers, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/review/school-board

Find Who’s on Board? School Boards and Political Representation in an Age of Conflict, written by David M. Houston and Michael T. Hartney and published by the Fordham Institute, at: https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/whos-board-school-boards-and-political-representation-age-conflict

 

NEPC Reviews (https://nepc.colorado.edu/reviews) provide the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC Reviews are made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, sponsors research, produces policy briefs, and publishes expert third-party reviews of think tank reports. NEPC publications are written in accessible language and are intended for a broad audience that includes academic experts, policymakers, the media, and the general public. Our mission is to provide high-quality information in support of democratic deliberation about education policy. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence and support a multiracial society that is inclusive, kind, and just. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu

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