Giving Compass' Take:

· Chalkbeat touches on a new study examining the demographic disconnect between school board voters and the diversity of public school students. 

· What can be done to address this demographic disconnect? Why is representation important for students? 

· Read more about diversity in America's schools today.

It’s well known that America’s teachers don’t look much like the country’s students. It turns out that the voters who elect America’s school boards don’t, either.

A new study appears to be the first of its kind to quantify the demographic mismatch, and it’s sizable. Across four states, including California, researchers estimate that school board voters are much whiter and more affluent than the public school student body.

In districts serving mostly students of color, like San Diego and San Francisco, the disparities are particularly striking, nearly 50 percentage points.

“These voters do not resemble the students who attend the public schools,” wrote researchers Vladimir Kogan, Stéphane Lavertu, and Zachary Peskowitz. “At least two-thirds of the majority nonwhite districts in our sample are nevertheless governed by school boards chosen by majority-white electorates.”

This is partially a result of demographic realities, as voting-age Americans are whiter than the country’s children. But the way school board elections are often set up — in off-cycle years where voter turnout is lower, and the electorate skews older and whiter — exacerbates the issue.

It’s a notable finding, said Domingo Morel, an education professor at Rutgers University.

“In a representative democracy, the whole idea is that the bodies that govern us are representative of us,” he said.

Read the full article about student diversity and school board elections by Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat.