Title Information
Title
Expertise and Independence on Governing Boards: Evidence from School Districts
Name
Name Part
Ying Shi
Role
Role Term (marcrelator) (authorityURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators", valueURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut")
author
Name
Name Part
John D. Singleton
Role
Role Term (marcrelator) (authorityURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators", valueURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut")
author
Subject
Topic
school boards
Subject
Topic
school districts
Subject
Topic
teachers
Subject
Topic
elections
Subject
Topic
teachers' unions
Subject (edworkp)
Topic
K-12 Education
Subject (edworkp)
Topic
Educator labor markets
Subject (edworkp)
Topic
Markets (vouchers, choice, for-profits, vendors)
Subject (edworkp)
Topic
Politics, governance, philanthropy, and organizations
Origin Information
Date Created
2019
Publisher
Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University
Abstract
In this paper, we study the roles of expertise and independence on governing boards in the context of education. In particular, we examine the causal influence of professional educators elected to local school boards on education production. Educators may bring valuable human capital to school district leadership, thereby improving student learning. Alternatively, the independence of educators may be distorted by interest groups. The key empirical challenge is that school board composition is endogenously determined through the electoral process. To overcome this, we develop and implement a novel research design that exploits California's randomized assignment of the order that candidates appear on election ballots. The insight of our empirical strategy is that ballot order effects generate quasi-random variation in the elected school board's composition. This approach is made possible by a unique dataset that combines election information about California school board candidates with district-level data on education inputs and outcomes. The results reveal that educators on the school board causally increase teacher salaries and reduce district enrollment in charter schools relative to other board members. We do not find accompanying effects on student test scores. We interpret these findings as consistent with educators on school boards shifting bargaining in favor of teachers' unions.
Language
Language Term: Code (ISO639-2B)
eng
Type of Resource
text
Genre (aat)
grey literature
Related Item: series
Title Information
Title
edworkingpapers.com
Related Item
Identifier: DOI
10.26300/baaw-tr16
Access Condition: use and reproduction (href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
In Copyright