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In the 1960s, people across the West started imagining that they were in a societal transition. Crucially, in these future-oriented discussions, social class was often transformed into educational attainment as the main dividing line. These future studies garnered attention across the political spectrum, including the Swedish Conservative Party. This article aims to investigate the Conservative Party's considerations on the societal and future role of education during the 1960s and 1970s. I show how the Conservative Party was one of the first proponents in articulating visions of the post-industrial society in Sweden. It saw the societal changes it brought about as its chance to realign the electorate and the political landscape in its favour. The educated voter was constructed by the Conservative Party as a new leading class in a society centred around education. The article contributes to the history of educational ideas of the 1960s and 1970s, educational classifications, futurology and post-industrial ideas.

Media reports suggest that parent frustration with COVID school policies and the growing politicization of education have increased community engagement with local public schools. However, there is no evidence to date on whether these factors have translated into greater engagement at the ballot box. This paper uses a novel data set to explore how school board elections changed following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I find that school board elections following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic were more likely to be contested and that voter turnout in contested elections increased. These changes were large in magnitude and varied with several district characteristics.

This study explores social studies teachers' self-reported instruction about teaching the 2020 election in U.S. secondary schools. We analyzed survey responses from 1,723 secondary social studies teachers from 12 states (3 left-leaning, 3 right-leaning, 6 battleground) collected in the weeks after the election, examining self-reported pedagogies, topics taught, and overall frequency of teaching about the election. Respondents reported teaching about the election more frequently if they taught courses in civics or government and/or if they had greater control over their curricula. Analyses indicated that teachers' demographic characteristics, teaching contexts, and ideologies about civic education were related to the election-related topics they taught and the instructional practices they employed. Our findings have important implications for educators, administrators, policymakers, and others interested in strengthening civic learning.

Being ubiquitous, language is essential to our everyday existence. Human language is seen to be a traditional field that depends on using words in accordance with intricate standards. In this study, the idea of aggressiveness is investigated from a pragmatic viewpoint. The goals of this research are to identify the aggressive techniques that Clinton uses in her speeches, to show the impoliteness tactics that she mostly uses to accomplish her goals, and to expose the pragma-rhetorical tropes that are mostly mentioned in her speeches. The research proposes that in her presentations, Clinton utilizes indirect verbal passive aggression, mostly negative impoliteness techniques, and often metaphor as the main rhetorical device. The study's results validate that Clinton utilizes indirect verbal passive aggression, mostly employs negative impoliteness techniques, and emphasizes overstatement as the main rhetorical device in her hostile speeches. Clinton's speeches are analyzed pragmatically to find rhetorical devices, aggressive messages, and rudeness tactics. The research admits several limitations, namely the subjectivity that might lead to interpretive biases in pragma-stylistic analysis. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, this research provides important new information on the aggressive language used by public authorities to shape public opinion.

In this study, since no candidate received more than fifty percent of the votes in the TRNC Presidential election held on October 11, 2020, the election campaign visions of the candidates who made it to the second round and their latest commercials were analyzed using discourse analysis. For this purpose, the political advertising campaign contents of Mustafa Akinci and Ersin Tatar, who made it to the second round of the Presidential election, were examined under the four headings of language clarity and understandability, transmission of political messages, informative content, political ethics and impartiality, which are four items within the scope of educational language in political advertising, and their contribution to the election result was evaluated.

Purpose: There is an absence of systematic review papers in the achievement motivation theories literature. In terms of current research trends, English learning motivation is gaining attention as a determiner of success in FLA. Hence, this review aims to trace the trends in the empirical studies on achievement motivation theories and tools, ranging from 1970 to 2022. Methodology: With a focus on theories, diversity of research participants, and practical ELT-related issues addressed by previous researchers, this paper applied the PRISMA Systematic Review Protocol to offer a comprehensive synthesis of 91 empirical studies on theories of achievement motivation. Findings: The majority of the published studies were from China and Iran. There was also a large number of studies conducted on tertiary-level learners. Structural equation modelling was found to be the most widely used analysis. In addition, technology-assisted learning is the current trend in achievement motivation research. Significance: This paper offers new insights into the existing achievement motivation literature and identifies the research gaps. This study recommends more studies on expectancy-value theory including in-depth qualitative studies involving culturally diverse populations and experimental research to develop more effective pedagogical approaches and expand the current understanding of achievement motivation.

Youth voter turnout remains stubbornly low and unresponsive to civic education. Rigorous evaluations of the effects of adopting civics tests for high school graduation by some states on youth voter turnout remain limited. We estimate the impact of a recent, state-mandated civics test policy--the Civics Education Initiative (CEI)--on youth voter turnout by exploiting spatial and temporal variation in the adoption of CEI across states. Using nationally representative data from the 1996 to 2020 Current Population Survey and a difference-in-differences analysis, we find that CEI does not significantly affect youth voter turnout. Our null results, largely insensitive to a variety of alternative specifications and robustness checks, provide evidence regarding the lack of efficacy of civics test policies when it comes to youth voter participation.

This article explores my teaching experiences that informed my distinction between religious literacy and critical religious literacy, ultimately leading to the creation of the Challenge Islamophobia Project. I highlight the impacts of post-9/11 criminalization and dehumanization of Muslims, which have significantly shaped public perceptions of Islam and its followers. Central to the discussion are specific activities from the lesson plan titled "What is Islamophobia," where students engage with various evidence, data, and artifacts to formulate their own definitions of Islamophobia. These lesson plans are tailored for secondary and college students, although adaptations for elementary education remain unaddressed at this time. Through this exploration, I aim to provide insights into fostering a deeper understanding of Islamophobia in educational settings.

This study seeks to assess whether self-interest influences support for two policies to cancel student debt--one forgiving all student debt and one taking a means-tested approach to debt forgiveness. Each of these policy proposals offers a material benefit to certain groups of individuals while imposing cost or having no benefit to others, which allows for an examination of the role of self-interest in policy preference. I use original Cooperative Congressional Election Study survey data and conduct binomial logistic regression to evaluate the role of self-interest on support for these policies as indicated by family income, student debt status, and belief that funding these programs will lead to the respondent's taxes increasing. I also consider the effects of party identification. My findings demonstrate that partisanship remains a strong predictor of policy preference and also suggests a significant role for self-interest in support and opposition of policies for student debt cancelation.

In this study, I explore the discourse surrounding parental rights in U.S. public schools, with Virginia as a focal point. Analyzing two sets of model policies regarding the treatment of transgender students--one established under a Democratic governor and another implemented following the election of a Republican candidate championing parental rights--this research employs qualitative content analysis to gain insight into the contemporary parental rights movement in educational settings. Five key themes emerged: 1. Reliance on expert opinions; 2. Variation in depth and breadth of information within policies; 3. Transgender student inclusion in policies; 4. Student and parent focus imbalance; and 5. Adherence to legal intent. The findings indicate a shift in emphasis from addressing gender identity concerns to prioritizing parental rights, with ramifications for the broader political landscape. This research enriches the ongoing dialogue on the role of parents in education and the consequences of the conservative parental rights movement for educational policy.

Preparing students to enter the workforce and attracting and retaining good teachers are Americans' top educational priorities for the next administration in Washington, regardless of who wins the upcoming presidential election, the 2024 PDK Poll finds. While eight in 10 or more Americans pick those two items as priorities, other policy priorities also win broad support. Seven in 10--or more--favor an increased focus on addressing student mental health, helping students who have fallen behind academically, and college affordability. The survey was produced by Langer Research Associates for PDK International, with data collected June 21 to July 1, 2024, in English and Spanish, among a representative, random national sample of 1,009 adults.

Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Islamophobia became increasingly visible across the U.S, impacting anyone perceived to be Muslim. Despite being named after a religion, Islamophobia is a racial ideology predominantly targeting people of Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian (MENASA) descent. In this qualitative study, the author explores how MENASA students navigated their college campuses in the period shortly following the 2016 election through examining the ways in which MENASA-focused cultural centers provided spaces of inclusion and belonging. The findings suggest that processes of racial formation and panethnic identity formation influenced the experiences of MENASA students in this period. Students demonstrated both a clear sense of racialization outside of whiteness, and the beginnings of panethnic identity formation across groups. These findings are situated in the particular temporal context of college-aged adults who both experienced 9/11 as young children and the 2016 presidential election in early adulthood.

The estimation of RxC ecological inference contingency tables from aggregate data is one of the most salient and challenging problems in the field of quantitative social sciences, with major solutions proposed from both the ecological regression and the mathematical programming frameworks. In recent decades, there has been a drive to find solutions stemming from the former, with the latter being less active. From the mathematical programming framework, this paper suggests a new direction for tackling this problem. For the first time in the literature, a procedure based on linear programming is proposed to attain estimates of local contingency tables. Based on this and the homogeneity hypothesis, we suggest two new ecological inference algorithms. These two new algorithms represent an important step forward in the ecological inference mathematical programming literature. In addition to generating estimates for local ecological inference contingency tables and amending the tendency to produce extreme transfer probability estimates previously observed in other mathematical programming procedures, these two new algorithms prove to be quite competitive and more accurate than the current linear programming baseline algorithm. Their accuracy is assessed using a unique dataset with almost 500 elections, where the real transfer matrices are known, and their sensitivity to assumptions and limitations are gauged through an extensive simulation study. The new algorithms place the linear programming approach once again in a prominent position in the ecological inference toolkit. Interested readers can use these new algorithms easily with the aid of the R package lphom.

The presentation of survey requests represents an easily modifiable feature of survey communications that can in some contexts affect response propensities. Here, we examine how two features: the framing of the participation request (informed by prospect theory) and the inclusion of targeted appeals based on demographic background (age or electoral district), affect participation rates in the 2021 Icelandic National Election Study, a mixed-mode cross-sectional survey. We find that these features generally fail to affect response propensities and sample composition. However, framed requests produced marginally higher response rates for a subset of the sample that was invited to complete the survey online. This suggests that modifying the presentation of the survey request may be less effective in cross-sectional surveys than in longitudinal ones, where more information is available to inform the content of targeted messages.

In this study, we drew on the m(ai)cro framework, which centers racism as a macrosystem, to examine how college-going emerging adults made meaning about society and themselves during the 2020 U.S. presidential election and 2021 inauguration. This period was marked by racial justice protests, a global pandemic, anti-Asian violence, and the storming of the U.S. Capitol by predominantly white Trump supporters. Using the constructs of critical consciousness and racial identity meaning making, we analyzed participants' reports of recent race related conversations. Our sample included 47 students (M[subscript age] = 19.71, SD = 1.72; 81% female, 17% male, 2% other; 45% Asian/Asian American, 30% white, 13% Latinx/Hispanic, 4% Black/African American, 4% Multiracial, 2% Middle Eastern/Arab) at a private, predominantly white university in the U.S. Midwest. Hybrid inductive-deductive analysis showed that a majority reported conversations with peers, focused primarily on racial inequity and justice. For many participants of color, conversations about topics including protests and anti-Asian violence were woven into their racial identities. In contrast, although many white participants discussed events such as the Capitol insurrection, none made links to their racial identities. Our findings highlight connections between critical consciousness and racial identity, and the importance of context and participant positionality in developmental research.

For the first time in U.S. higher education history, new international student enrollment at four-year U.S. institutions declined for the second consecutive academic year in 2017-2018. Many studies have investigated why international students choose to pursue U.S. higher education. However, scant research has explored how U.S. politics affects the number of new international students studying in the U.S. We explore whether there was a "red effect" (Republican counties) or a "blue effect" (Democratic counties) experiencing declines in international student enrollment. Using institutional-level fixed effects approaches, new international student enrollment declined at many institutions in Republican-voting counties, while new international student enrollment remained steady or increased at institutions in Democratic-voting counties. Implications for research, practice, and international education are addressed.

In this article, Arnold Shober asserts that despite the special challenges of public governance, state boards can effectively serve as beacons of policy. An effective board is driven by effective members whatever its structure, and effective members are committed to a shared agenda and the larger project of providing direction for a state's education system. The experience of boards over the last 40 years yields some takeaways regarding their structure. First, appointed boards can take on bigger, longer-term projects because members do not need to spend time on the electoral part of the job. Second, elected boards can be very effective if they have natural links to the legislature or governor, likely through a shared party. Shober goes on to point out that board governance structures encourage effectiveness, but all boards can take steps to improve. Boards should heed observations drawn from the nongovernmental world: (1) effective boards present a unified vision for education; (2) effective boards keep lines of communication open with the governor's office and the state education agency (SEA); and (3) effective boards capitalize on the expertise of their members. Shober concludes there is no one-size-fits-all strategy, but experience shows that state boards can offer effective governance amid the tumult of modern American education.

This article explores the causes of the epistemological crisis that gave rise to conspiracy theories which culminated in large swathes of the U.S. population refusing to accept the outcome of a democratic election. An epistemological crisis is defined by a blurring of facts and falsehoods to the degree that blatant and obvious propaganda holds sway over large segments of the population, resulting in truth decay. We provide an analysis of the propaganda themes collected and identified by the Computational Propaganda Project from April through July of 2020 that demonstrate their prevalence in American social media platforms. We then show how education may limit propaganda's deleterious effects. We approach our research in an interdisciplinary way from the fields of education and cultural anthropology and so contribute an angle to the current conversations about education in a democratic society that has not been the primary focus of educational thought.

Student governments can play an important part of the habit development of participating in democracy. A study in 2012, however, illustrated just how few students actually voted in their own student government elections. With a changing world of national politics, there is a need to understand student voting as a possible reflection of participation after college. This study compared student voting in their own government elections between 2012 and 2020, finding several, yet no significant, differences in voter turnout. The study used a sample of doctoral and comprehensive institutions, finding under one-in-five students voted in their own government elections.

This study aims to explore the political involvement of Kazakhstani youth prior to and following the tragic events of January 2022 in Kazakhstan. The utilization of social media played a crucial role in mobilizing Kazakh youth during the widespread protest against authoritarian governance in January 2022. The tragic events served as a catalyst, highlighting the inevitability of political and socio-economic reforms in the country. The study employed the theory of political engagement and apperception of the Internet as a virtual realm of political communication as an investigative tool to examine this issue. The article presents sociological data gathered collected from 2013 to 2022, aiming to offer into the impact of modern information technologies, specifically social networks, on the political engagement of Kazakhstani youth. The theory of political engagement enables the identification of the underlying nature of shifts in youth engagement and disengagement during the post-Soviet era. It was during the crisis that notable upsurge in political activity among young people became apparent. A comparison of the data gathered by various sociological centers, employing the respondent interviews, reveals contrasting trends. On the one hand, there is an increase in the activity of expressing personal opinions on social networks. On the other hand, there is a growing detachment from political participation, such as voting in elections and engaging in party memberships, among others. The findings of the study revealed that the political moods of Kazakhstani youth persist after January 2022 without undergoing a transformative shift toward increased party and movement affiliations, active involvement in election campaigns, and voting. Instead, protest sentiments are once again becoming dormant, which helps to explain the political absenteeism observed among many young individuals.

In this critical discourse analysis, we examined 18 college student government campaign platforms from 9 institutions in the state of Florida. We used neoliberalism as a conceptual framework to examine platforms and, in particular, the way(s) students running for office described neoliberal agendas, policies, and thought. Findings revealed concern for student finances and increasing student fees, proposed private sector solutions, an unacknowledged political climate, communications trends, and notable differences by institution type.

Purpose: Several studies uncover how the period leading up to the 2016 election and the Trump administration affected college students, in particular those targeted by the rhetoric and policies in this tense sociopolitical environment. This article builds on this scholarship and examines how the broader sociopolitical context shaped how targeted and nontargeted students perceived and experienced the campus climate. Research Methods/Approach: We interviewed 21 students who had taken a higher-education course at one institution to gather their perspectives of campus climate. Students commonly referenced undocumented students and students of color as directly affected by policies and rhetoric during this time. We subsequently considered self-identified students of color and undocumented students as belonging to targeted groups and those who did not as nontargeted. Findings: Students described how the sociopolitical climate between 2016 and 2018 directly and indirectly influenced campus climate based on their perceptions and experiences. Students shared how discourse toward minoritized communities increased overt marginalization in the United States and on campuses. Immigration policies were frequently mentioned as impactful, and nontargeted students expressed major concerns for their targeted peers and family members. A few students also described how the polarized sociopolitical climate outside the university created divisions among students. Implications: Institutions should seek ways to ameliorate concerns and tensions students may feel as a result of challenging sociopolitical and campus climates. In addition to supporting students from targeted communities, institutions should provide opportunities for nontargeted students to learn more about issues affecting targeted communities.

An i-voting system may promote electoral participation by reducing travel cost and time to polling places, especially among youth who are more accustomed to technological changes. We study the linkage between travel costs on election day and voter turnout by comparing past electoral participation with stated voting behavior in a hypothetical i-voting system. We believe that the link between transportation costs, i-voting, and voter-turnout emerges as an interesting opportunity to disentangle the mechanism behind the expected increase in political participation after diversifying voting channels. Data were collected using an online questionnaire that was disseminated among Chilean university students. Binary and bivariate probit estimates show that conventional turnout probability among university students is negatively affected by travel costs on election day. Interestingly, whereas political interest and democracy valuation still augment the probability of voter turnout with i-voting, travel-to-polling-station costs are not statistically relevant.

As democracies have deteriorated worldwide, understanding preservice teachers' perceptions regarding teaching about the 2020 US presidential election helps teacher educators better guide them to make informed and intentional pedagogical decisions for democratic education. Through a survey study, we found that early childhood and elementary preservice social studies teachers did not express a strong degree of comfort teaching about the presidential election and were most comfortable teaching about matters of literacy and of political agreement.

This study aims to analyze the learning resources of Islamic boarding schools written by kyai and santri (teacher and student of Islamic boarding school in Indonesia). This study uses a qualitative approach with a literature study design. The literature sources come from (limited by) seven books written by Kai and Santri at the Lirboyo Islamic Boarding School Kediri Indonesia that discuss the caliphate in the democratic era. The findings of this study indicate that Islamic boarding school learning resources contain materials or teachings related to the chalipate and nasionalism, including: (a) the concept of the caliphate as in the early days of Islam is no longer an ideal model of government today. Therefore, the concept of a democratic state is one of the ideal models in a pluralistic society; (b) The concept of choosing a leader based on the concept of the caliphate is no longer suitable for today. The election of leaders through a democratic model that hands over the election of state leaders (government) to the people is one of the ideal models; and (c) Obedience to the leader (government) elected by the people is an obligation for every citizen. Therefore, leaders who are not in accordance with Islamic law do not have to be fought or rebelled against but rather faced democratically, legally, constitutionally in accordance with applicable laws and regulations for the sake of the integrity of the nation and to avoid fraternal conflict and division.

Elections have become the new battleground for democracy and civil rights. Yet few social work programs provide opportunities for students to gain competency in electoral politics and voter engagement. This article describes an elective course for Master of Social Work students offered in the runup to the 2018 and 2020 elections. Using classroom and community-based learning, students engaged in activities designed to maximize voter participation. Feedback derived from multiple sources speaks to student learning, feelings of accomplishment, a recognition that voting matters, and insights regarding the link between voting and social work. This course represents one model that can be replicated, in whole or in part, as social work programs seek to incorporate voting-related activities into their curricula.

Alongside the Disney theme park, miles of beaches along both the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, Florida's long southern peninsula is filled with political, social, and cultural differences. The state's diversity comes as close to any geographic location in the world characterised by the term 'internationalism,' racially, ethnically, and culturally. Yet, not so long ago, this once bastion of liberal welcoming of others has now become firmly entrenched in the Republican Party's extreme brand of `Make America Great Again' (MAGA). This transition, however, did not happen accidently as the authors hope to make clear in this article. There are deep historical and philosophical antecedents to the Florida story which are meant to change how the US is governed, illiberally, and how it relates to the world. It is, therefore, a professional responsibility for internationally-minded educational leadership researchers to reclaim the purposes of education.

Voting instruction typically provided to students is focused on educating for informed voting, but we believe it is essential that schools educate for informed and equitable voting. Indeed, in a well-functioning democratic society, participants need to be prepared to engage in critical, but civil, discourse with and about people who look and think differently from themselves, which necessitates learning about issues of equity. Drawing on the efforts of 20 in-service educators to promote equitable voting ahead of the 2020 election, this study examines the ways in which participants incorporated issues of equity into their instruction and the conditions that supported or limited these efforts. We also discuss our concerns with how voting was taught by participants and provide recommendations for what educating for equitable voting might look like, a goal that has taken on added importance given recent challenges to how K-12 teachers can talk about issues of equity in the classroom.

Many college students are motivated to vote in presidential elections. Like most Americans, however, they are far less likely to vote in elections for local officeholders. Often this is because they have little to no information about the candidates. Starting in 2020, with university support, the author and a colleague began providing nonpartisan information about candidates for local offices in their county. Their website is available to students and voters throughout their county. More colleges and universities should undertake similar ventures, which would fill a vital and underserved public need, strengthen the civic behaviors of college students, and enhance democracy.

Mock elections are an increasingly popular form of active learning, adopted in many European countries and the United States. However, we have limited knowledge regarding the extent to which they enhance students' civic competence. This article analyzes data from over 9,000 students aged 13-19 who participated in a 2022 mock election in Sweden. The goal is to determine the extent to which mock elections boost civic competence, with an emphasis on potential variations related to gender, ethnic background, and educational stage. Results indicate that such participation positively influences students' self-reported political knowledge and, to a lesser extent, their political interest, engagement, and efficacy. Yet, the impact varies among student demographics. For instance, foreign-born students reported greater effects than their Swedish-born counterparts. Female students displayed heightened political knowledge and interest compared to males, while male students demonstrated higher political engagement. Interestingly, mock elections seemed to enhance political knowledge more in primary school students than in secondary school ones. Conversely, they had a more pronounced impact on the political interests and engagement of secondary school students. The study concludes with suggestions for future research to employ more rigorous methods to assess the influence of mock elections on civic competencies.

Political polarization in the United States is not a recent phenomenon. States are now often described as "red" or "blue" based on how voters predominately voted in the Presidential and other statewide elections. These differences now seem to have generated into values considerations oriented around social characteristics and beliefs about the size and role of government in society, with corresponding relationships to health behaviors. At no time perhaps was this more apparent than during the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on earlier research that ranked states on how hazardous or health promoting they are to the health of the citizenry, the authors attempted to further determine if any relationship might exist between these variables and how each state voted in the 2020 Presidential election. Of those states that ranked in the top 25 in earlier research on the multiple variables related to the actual causes of death, 5 are red states (voting Republican) and 20 are blue states (voting Democrat). While the authors acknowledge that clearly multiple factors are involved that center on differing values, this examination suggests that blue states ranked better on these measures.

For hard-to-survey populations such as ethnic minorities and immigrants, increasing survey response rates is a crucial element of the fieldwork as these populations often show a higher likelihood of not participating compared with the native population. However, no study has so far compared different strategies for mobilisation within this group. Using data from the Immigrant German Election Study II, this experiment systematically compares the effects of home visits and postal reminders for the mobilisation of immigrant-origin non-respondents (i.e. persons classified as being from Turkey or from the former Soviet Union and its successor states) from a randomly drawn sample regarding the likelihood of participation in the first wave, signing up for a multi-wave panel, and taking part in all three panel waves. Multivariate analyses show that those in the treated home-visit group were more likely to take part in all stages of the survey design. Even though costs are higher than conventional postal reminders, home visits might be a useful strategy for cases in which increasing the response rate is an important goal, given a fixed, small number of potential respondents.

Despite the growing presence and visibility of paleoconservative critique of international curricula such as the IB, little scholarly attention has been invested in discerning how the rise of paleoconservative thought in mainstream politics has shaped or even redirected the IB's growth in the United States. This study strives to address this gap by examining the association between county-level voting patterns with the growth of the IB, the availability of different programs of the IB continuum, and school demographic data. Incidence Rate Ratios (IRR) and 95% Wald Confidence Intervals (CI) were estimated using mixed-effects Poisson models with county as the clustering variable. Notable findings include a shift in growth patterns beginning in 2008, where IB schools have increasingly clustered along partisan lines. The study concludes by considering the potential challenges these changing growth patterns may present to the IB's future in the United States and elsewhere.

The past few years have seen a rise in interest in local elected offices, specifically in school board seats. These seats hold unequivocal power over what school districts can do in terms of advancing equity and excellence in education. We explore one facet of what became a playbook of anti-equity efforts in school districts during the COVID-19 pandemic -- the 2021 school board recall attempts, which had quadrupled compared to any other year. Highlighting one successful recall and identifying similarities among these recall efforts, we argue that the these attempts were fueled by ideological differences and racial politics, which often served to disrupt equity efforts in education.

While biographical sketches of many publicly elected leaders in the US exist, little is known about the connection between serving in college student government and running for or serving in elected public office after college. This phenomenological study explored the experiences of 19 former college student government officers in elected, post-college public office. Notably, former college student government officers felt like they were in public office all along and that student government was a microcosm of post-college public life. College campaigns and elections were preparatory experiences, and college student government was a "training ground" for later elected office and representational leadership.

Educational outcomes for Black & brown students are the result of well-functioning school systems overwrought with top-down bureaucracy that stifle school-based leaders from generating school-based solutions. The dominant explanation is the growing power and influence of politically-driven school board members cut off from local, national, and international best practices. Previous research has centered on the power of school boards and what can be done by school board officials with more power. The article explores the impact of school boards ceding power and giving more autonomy to school based leaders through three case studies. Findings indicate that the school districts making the greatest gains for Black & brown students are those that introduce innovation schools or schools that provide more autonomy in return for more accountability.

The purpose of this article is to examine the critical components to successfully serving on a school board or leadership roles, as a member of the Latino(a) community. According to a 2010 national school board survey, only 3% of the 900 board respondents identified as Latino(a) compared with almost 80% who identified as White. The first author employs her personal narrative as a method for describing the process of becoming an effective school board member in two different settings, while the second author discusses the contributions of relevant literature, drawing from her experience as a district leader and professor in higher education. Once selected as a board member and district leader, respectively, the authors share the challenges, achievements, and lessons learned from their experiences that can inform others. As demographics in the United States school districts shift, the call for district leaders and school board members to reflect the communities of which they serve, is vital.