Over the past year or so, I and others have been making abundant use of information provided by Ballotpedia, a national nonprofit organization which describes itself as “the online encyclopedia of American politics.”
Ballotpedia’s school board elections coverage includes a weekly newsletter, a podcast (on which I have been a guest), and timely reports, many of them with interesting findings.
From Ballotpedia, I’ve learned:
📌 The percentage of uncontested school board election rates is much higher than it might seem.
📌 The percentage of recall efforts that reach the ballot and succeed at the ballot box is relatively small.
📌 When last measured, the percentage of successful school board challengers who are opposed to race, gender, and COVID mitigation efforts was only about a third.
Recall efforts, challenges, and highly polarized school board conflicts are sexy, high-conflict stories to tell — education’s version of political horse race coverage. But they may be much less common than is depicted in the media. And, according to Ballotpedia head Leslie Graves, the outcomes of these contests might not be all that consequential either.