I have mentioned several times before, the results of this study are limited in several important ways. First are the limitations imposed by the size and selection method of the sample. There are tens of thousands of school board members across the country, and a sample of sixteen can hardly reveal much about such a diverse population. Similarly, given that this study was conducted exclusively in North Carolina, regional level factors may make generalizing these results invalid. Moreover, the type of interview data I collected (in addition to the sample size), though it was revealing, cannot do much to demonstrate causal connections between my
variables of interest. However, I think my data does have some potential for practical application and certainly can be helpful in framing future research.
Especially given that one of my research questions was intended to assess the degree to which stakeholders are utilizing academic research, I think it’s important to detail some possible ways in which I think people concerned with educational inequality can apply the findings of this study. I think these preliminary observational results have practical implications for three groups: district electorates, board members themselves, and education researchers. For the average citizen who is tasked with evaluating and voting for candidates, I hope my research will
that many citizens only give board platforms a cursory glance before voting for the candidate who has the best single page pitch for the future of the district. This is assuming they vote at all. I myself cannot remember a time that I have voted in a truly informed way for a school board member and, prior to conducting this research, I would have been hard pressed to name a single member of my local board. However, my research suggests that the ways that school board members make decisions about some of the most important district is influenced by and related to a host of factors, none of which would appear on a platform pamphlet. So, at the very least this data should motivate citizens to pay more carful attentions to factors like race, ideology, and research background when deciding how to vote.
Similarly, I hope that this research will motivate board members in a couple of ways. First, and most broadly, I hope that it serves to underscore the important role board members can place in addressing racial inequality in their districts. Secondly, I think that my finding suggests board members should be thoughtful about the myriad of factors that influence the way that they approach issues impacting their schools’ most vulnerable students. Finally, I think my data suggests that the way that board members approach and access research may play a meaningful role in shaping their views. So, attempts to engage meaningfully with academic research an to learn to interpret those results correctly may be helpful.
Finally, I think this study plausibly suggests that the work we do as researchers can and does matter. When research makes its way into the right hands, it can meaningfully impact the policy decisions of board members. However, all too few of those on the ground actually engage with our research. So, perhaps we can be more intentional about making sure our research is accessible and visible to policymakers, they will be more likely to encounter and be influenced by our findings. Additionally, my intuition is that may of the board members I encountered
lacked the training to interpret complex and technical findings. So, perhaps we can make an effort to translate our findings into language that is accessible to the sociologically uninitiated.
In addition to these thoughts about the practical implication for researchers, I think my results can help inform future research into school boards and their decision making processes, particularly as those decisions relate to inequality. Since this was intended as an exploratory study, these implications for future research are relatively extensive. To begin, I would also like to see more literature exploring how a more nuanced view of the structural/cultural distinction may better illuminate how policymakers (especially board members) make decisions. Though I posited internal/external distinction, it seems plausible that a better framework may exist for categorizing the views of policymakers who have influence over a specific area of government (which may allow for them to shift blame onto other social or governmental structural factors). I think also my data indicates that there may be cause to revisit the 23-year-old literature on the models of board decision-making. Though I was able to categorize my interviewees as either professional or political, I found the distinction generally unhelpful. Not only did this distinction lack much predictive power in my particular context, but it seemed to me that most board members used elements of both frameworks to conceptualize their roles.
Since my research suggested links between the each of the independent variables—race, politics, and religion—and the framing/knowledge of issues around racial inequality, I believe each of these factors warrants some further exploration. Though it may seem self-evident that board members of color better conceptualize the causes of the achievement gap, the reasons for this connection were not completely clear to me. Additionally, I think there is reason to explore the impacts of the black board member’s unique focus on cultural considerations. Similarly, I think that researchers should explore the subtle ways that politics and religion can influence
board members in the ostensibly secular and anti-partisan realm of board decision-making. I’d also like to see research into the ways in which the influence of these two types of ideologies intersects in the decisions local policymakers.
There is also much still to be learned about how academic research can play a role in district level decisions. Though my data plausibly suggests that making research more available might have positive implications for minority students, this is by no means certain. Additional research into the extent to which empirical evidence can tangibly sway the votes and actions of board members is necessary. Moreover, there may be much to be gained by exploring the best and most effective ways to get digestible summaries of academic literature into the hands of those who can best act upon its findings.
Finally, there are undoubtedly a number of variables that influence how board members frame and respond to issues of race in their districts. I would like to suggest two more factors that I believe warrant further exploration: district urbanicity and board member tenure. During my discussions with several board members, it occurred to be that the urbanicity of their districts must play a huge role in shaping their views on inequality. Not only do large cities have more and different issues of inequality, they have more accountability from their communities (simply by virtue of size). The reverse surely holds true for more rural districts. However, I could find no research on the subject. Secondly, several board members commented on the which they had changed during their service. Though I didn’t have enough data to notice trends, I think is a productive line of inquiry.
In closing, I’d like to make a sobering observation that both suggests a topic of future research and contextualizes my project. Though it was beyond the scope of my research and data to analyze the extent to which board attitudes are correlated with the size of school achievement
gaps, I did have the opportunity to look over district data during each interview. The numbers are clear: even in the districts with the most involved and racially aware board members, huge gaps persist and many have not narrowed over the last ten years. I think it is worth asking, even with the most empirically driven and corporative members, what percentage of these gaps can school boards meaningfully close? However, even if the answer is numerically small, I do believe that limited, iterative changes are worthwhile. And I am encouraged to see that research may be able to influence this level of policymaking. So, I’d like to end by answering the question I alluded to in the title of the thesis. Do studies like this one matter? Though schools remain depressingly unequal and many policymakers often seem utterly disconnected from the information they need to make informed decision, I have reason to believe that they do.