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The article reports on the school reform and politics participation. It mentions the Summer 2022 issue of Education Next, in an article on topic "Locally Elected School Board Are Failing," improving school governance and to ensure that the reform process prioritizes the interests of kids rather than the demands and political agendas of adults.

The article reports the nation's school boards including Local news reports, op-ed pages, and viral social-media post featuring parents and advocates protesting the presence of armed police officers in schools, the use of entrance exams for selective programs, mask mandates for in-person learning, and allegations that Critical Race Theory was infiltrating the K–12 curriculum.

Political scientists have largely overlooked the democratic challenges inherent in the governance of U.S. public education—despite profound implications for educational delivery and, ultimately, social mobility and economic growth. In this study, we consider whether the interests of adult voters who elect local school boards are likely to be aligned with the needs of the students their districts educate. Specifically, we compare voters and students in four states on several policy-relevant dimensions. Using official voter turnout records and rich microtargeting data, we document considerable demographic differences between voters who participate in school board elections and the students attending the schools that boards oversee. These gaps are most pronounced in majority nonwhite jurisdictions and school districts with the largest racial achievement gaps. Our novel analysis provides important context for understanding the political pressures facing school boards and their likely role in perpetuating educational and, ultimately, societal inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We employ a regression discontinuity design leveraging close school board elections to investigate how the racial and ethnic composition of California school boards affects school district administration and student achievement. We find some evidence that increases in minority representation lead to cumulative achievement gains of approximately 0.1 standard deviations among minority students by the sixth post‐election year. These gains do not come at the expense of white students' academic performance, which also appears to improve. Turning to the policy mechanisms that may explain these effects, we find that an increase in minority representation leads to greater capital funding and a larger proportion of district principals who are non‐white. We find no significant effects of minority representation on school segregation, the reclassification of English language learners, or teacher staffing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]