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School Boards’ Effect on Student Learning Gets New Attention

Des Moines, Iowa

With prominent critics labeling them irrelevant and big-city mayors looking to take them over, the nation’s local school boards have seen better times. But what’s really the matter with the nearly 15,000 boards, scholars who met here this month say, is that they are understudied.

“There’s a lot of conjecture and opinion out there,” said Thomas L. Alsbury, a researcher from North Carolina State University and the chairman of the Sept. 13-15 meeting. “Most of those debates are not predicated on research.”

Drawing 150 researchers, school board members, and association officials, the conference was the first time since 1975 that scholars and practitioners met at a national level to talk about research on school boards,...