Running for School Board? Better Win Over the Teachers’ Union, Research Finds

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This article is part of The 74’s EDlection 2024 coverage, which takes a look at candidates’ education policies and how they might impact the American education system after the 2024 election.

Candidates bring a variety of strengths to America’s thousands of annual school board elections: generous donors, compelling personal stories, impressive CVs and even a few doses of charm.

But according to research from political scientists at Ohio State University and Boston College, one of the most valuable assets of all is the endorsement of the local teachers’ union.

The paper, circulated by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, finds that a union endorsement increases support for candidates by as much as 20 percentage points among various voting blocs, with the effects particularly concentrated among Democrats and those who favor organized labor. Almost no group, including Republicans, responds negatively to the endorsements, the authors found.

The study offers an intriguing explanation of exactly how teachers’ unions help their preferred politicians win office. Beyond storming the polls with energized members, or using their vaunted organizing strength to get out the vote, local teachers’ associations appear to triumph in large measure through their popularity with the electorate. Parents and community members from different walks of life believe that leaders who win the approval of teachers will do what is right for schools, including by improving student performance.

Ohio State political scientist Vladimir Kogan said that he and his co-author, Michael Hartney of Boston College, were struck by the “huge positive effect” of such endorsements on the public perception of candidates. Among Democrats, he noted, the boost was of approximately the same size as learning that a given candidate was a Democrat himself. 

“In American politics, it’s very hard to find a piece of information that moves votes as much as partisanship, so that’s a pretty shocking impact,” Kogan said. “Even for Republicans, it’s positive.”

The researchers investigated the scale of the political benefits by running multiple studies over the last 12 years. 

(Reformers) underestimate how influential teachers — and teachers' unions — are, in terms of how much voters are willing to defer to them.

Vlad Kogan, Ohio State University

The first, in 2012, consisted of a survey administered to about 1,700 registered voters in San Diego about their voting intentions in two upcoming school board races. The elections were nonpartisan, as are the overwhelming majority contested throughout the country each year, but participants were randomly presented with biographies that either included or excluded information about one candidate’s endorsement by the San Diego Education Association. 

Among Democrats who learned of the endorsement, support shot up by 12 percentage points. Independent voters became about six points more likely to support the union-favored candidate, while for Republicans, the boost was positive but statistically negligible. Across a range of nonpartisan demographics, the effects were even larger: Respondents who rated teachers favorably were 10 points more likely to favor a union-endorsed candidate, and those who rated labor unions favorably were 20 points more likely. 

A follow-up experiment, conducted at the beginning of 2023, replicated those findings almost exactly. This poll was sent to a national sample of roughly 1,400 respondents, with some exposed at random to candidate descriptions highlighting the support of “a local teachers’ union” (or, more generically, “a local teacher association”). 

The average survey participant was eight percentage points more likely to opt for a candidate who received an endorsement — more than enough to swing a close election. And while that added support was again driven by those who felt warmly toward unions and teachers, reactions to the endorsement information from almost all respondent groups were either positive or effectively neutral; just one small group, those who voiced negative views of teachers, were more likely to reject a candidate after learning they had the backing of a teachers’ union. 

It is notable that unions’ blessing kept its potency between 2012 and 2023, a period when politics became more bitterly polarized and unions themselves were often blamed for prolonging school closures in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Kogan said that the lasting strength of the union movement — often cast as the villain in some of the fiercest disputes of the education reform era, including battles over school choice and teacher tenure — wasn’t widely understood by those who have opposed it. 

“This is inconsistent with the stories reformers tell,” Kogan said. “I think they underestimate how influential teachers — and teachers’ unions — are, in terms of how much voters are willing to defer to them.”

‘Incredible’ branding

Critically, Kogan and Hartney’s survey work only shows how potential voters tend to react when they discover that a particular candidate has been endorsed. It is unknown how often that information actually reaches them.

Though a fixture of local civic life, school board races are among the most opaque of any in American democracy. According to the National School Boards Association, participation in the elections — often conducted during off-cycle years, with no national or statewide figures to draw marginal voters — ranges from 5 to 10 percent. Since party affiliation is seldom listed on the ballot, even those who turn out don’t receive a clear signal about candidates’ policy preferences.

John Singleton, an economist at the University of Rochester, said that messages from trusted local groups likely played a crucial role in guiding voters’ decisions. Unlike statewide or congressional campaigns, he said, most school board elections generate little in the way of media coverage. 

“You could go on your school board candidate’s Facebook page and read about their policy positions, but that’s going to require you knowing who they are and seeking them out,” Singleton observed. “On the other hand, it’s possible to passively absorb that information” through media and endorsements, he added.

The second survey allowed the research team to directly test the importance of union support against various other attributes that might plausibly help voters make up their minds, including candidates’ occupations, whether they had children, and whether they had received endorsements from other groups. In thousands of head-to-head comparisons, respondents rated imaginary candidates with randomly assigned traits.

This added wrinkle made it even clearer how influential teachers unions can be. The effect of their endorsement was larger than that of a local newspaper or chamber of commerce. Revealingly, the advantages it conferred were also greater than those of an endorsement from a cafeteria workers’ union — showing that teachers themselves, more so than school employees generally, command particular loyalty from their communities.

Singleton said that the successful branding exemplified by groups like the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, extending from tiny local school districts to national politics, was “kind of incredible.”

“In terms of the coordination between the grassroots and the national organizations, and the influence they have, it’s a model for other activist efforts,” he said.

Notably, the 2023 study prodded participants to not only name which candidate they might support, but also which would be more likely to improve conditions in local schools. Union-endorsed candidates were, on average, thought more likely to raise teacher salaries, improve academic outcomes for students, and to be more responsive to parents. 

Kogan said the reputational improvement of being affiliated with a teachers’ union was highly unusual. The only comparably positive perception he could think of was the organizational credibility of the American Medical Association, which has exerted heavy influence in public health policy over the last century.

Until recently, Kogan argued, police unions enjoyed a similar “halo,” frequently winning voters for their chosen candidates in elections that hinged on questions of criminal justice and public safety. But recent research has shown that, with the increasing polarization around policing and officer-involved shootings, views of those unions have taken on a more partisan skew.

“Many voters, particularly Democratic ones, have realized that a candidate isn’t necessarily good just because the police union says so,” he said. “The halo effect has eroded over time for police unions, but not for teachers.”

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