Featured Publication

Still the Ones to Beat: Teachers’ Unions and School Board Elections

by Michael Hartney 

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s school boards were often praised as responsive and representative engines of American democracy. Especially when juxtaposed with our national and state political institutions, board members are portrayed as less polarized and less prone to special-interest capture. According to one widely cited study, not only are local school boards responsive to the preferences of ordinary Americans, they are mostly immune from the influence of teachers’ unions that, these scholars conclude, do little to diminish the degree to which boards represent the public’s interest.

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