Please note: This transcript was automatically generated. We have reviewed it to ensure it reflects the original conversation, but we may not have caught every transcription error.

Christopher Saldaña: Hi everyone. I'm Chris Saldaña, and this is the National Education Policy Center's Talks Education Podcast. On this month's podcast, we're interviewing doctors Julie Marsh and James Bridgeforth. Professor Marsh is a professor of education policy at the Rossier School of Education and Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California.

She specializes in research on K-12 policy and governance, blending perspectives in education, sociology, and political science. Dr. Bridgeforth is an assistant professor specializing in educational leadership in the School of Education at the University of Delaware. He's an educator, researcher, and policy advocate. In this month's podcast, doctors Marsh and Bridgeforth help us understand recent trends in school board governance and politics.

So while media headlines often focus on the most contentious and dramatic school board conflicts, a new report from USC's Ed Policy Hub offers something different, an intimate year-long look at the actual experiences of 10 California School Board members as they navigate one of the most challenging periods in recent educational history.

The report, titled California School Boards: Navigating Democracy in Divided Times, was authored by a team led by Drs. Julie Marsh and James Bridgeforth, and it paints a nuanced picture of dedicated public servants trying to serve their communities while facing unprecedented political pressures, technological disruptions, and time constraints that would test anyone's commitment to public service.

So Julie, let me start with you. The report paints a picture of school board members facing unprecedented challenges in our current political climate. Can you help our listeners understand what the day-to-day reality looks like for school board members today compared to say maybe 10 or 15 years ago?

Julie Marsh: Yeah, that's a great question. I think we all know that politics have always been a part of schools and school boards, and there's been times in our history that we've seen boards become this site of conflict, a place where social issues are playing out. And politicians have used boards for multiple years and long before this current era to ensure that their base was supporting them.

And we've even seen in recent years a lot of more money coming in from outside interest into board elections, often in larger urban districts. And so I think it's first important to say what's new now? What's new? And part of it is that we've seen politicization expand into suburban areas, not just in the rural and in the urban.

We see a widening of disagreement on matters of education that often fall along party lines, often more extreme positions, right? We're seeing that just in society at large, all accelerated during the pandemic with anti-vaxing and anti-masks. And debates over right in person. So there's been a lot of conflict; boards have been at the center of a lot of these controversial decisions around what should be taught in schools and book bands and transgender athletes.

And the conflicts have often been tied to well-funded efforts of groups like Moms for Liberty; in California, we have some mega churches that have been playing a role. And then I think even more recently, just again to set the picture here, is that there have been a lot of more controversial kinds of actions coming from the federal government that are contributing to this context of uncertainty around funding. immigration rules and deportations and anti-DEI policies.

And then finally declining enrollment has been heightening these kinds of constraints on boards. And so I think it's in this environment that we're seeing that school board members and the role is increasingly more complex. And our report, I think does a good job. In our research we see what does that look like in the day-to-day reality?

And they're finding a lot of difficulties navigating relationships with their community, with their superintendent, with fellow board members. They're spending a lot more time than they had anticipated in that work, in terms of not just reviewing minutes and preparing for the board meetings, but attending sessions that go for long hours.

We heard up to 20 hours in a week when we did this research. Sometimes it was up to 40, 45. It depends how many hours, it depends on the time of year. And they're doing this in addition to having often full-time jobs and a family at home. For some people the time is just leading them not to wanna run again.

And then in addition to the time we're seeing that people really want more support. They're finding it hard to navigate all these complexities. And then they're facing a lot of dilemmas around how do they meet and balance the competing demands of the constituents in their communities?

And also unexpected confrontations with social media, dilemmas about trying to do what they think is morally right versus what their constituents with the power to reelect them want. And so all of that's, I think, leading to, and what we found in our report, was a kind of emotional strain and a toll that it's taking on them in a lot of cases.

Some of them have never anticipated the level of stress and the sort of attacks on their personal life that come along with the job. And we had examples of people where community members strategically used misinformation or were threatening recalls to retaliate, and I think, so all of that suggests that really the experiences of being a board member is very challenging for a lot of these folks.

Christopher Saldaña: Did it come up at all with your research partners, school board members that you spoke with around how much they expected the sort of environment that they were walking into? Did that come up at all?

Julie Marsh: I just, I think some of them didn't expect the kind of personal confrontation; there were times that some of them felt like they were being yelled at or that people would go to great lengths to or the internal conflicts were probably also sometimes surprising that you have people on the board who were trying to prevent their issues from getting on an agenda or, I just think that to, for some of them, it really wasn't the kind of public service volunteer position that some of them maybe wanted and thought they were going into.

Christopher Saldaña: So James, I wanna move to you. Your research identifies four primary ways that board members conceptualize their roles: as change makers, as champions, as rule followers, and representatives.

How do these different orientations shape the way boards function and what happens when board members with different orientations serve together?

James Bridgeforth: I think that's a really great question, and when we looked at this typology one of the big things that came out of it for us is that we recognize that it wasn't just a static thing; this was completely dynamic. So you have some board members who may shift and change. Like they might in some ways be more like more of a change maker. Some ways it might be more of representative. They can be all the things at all at one time. So one of the things that we noticed was that all the board members in our sample, they all saw themselves as representatives. I think what's different though is that they saw themselves as representatives for different types of constituencies or different types of groups. So you might have somebody who might, who's on the board, who thinks, oh, I'm a representative for the taxpayers, not necessarily the people who have kids in school, but I'm representing the people who don't, but are still a part of this community.

Or there are some that might think, I'm a representative for the students or for the teachers or for different marginalized groups. And so I think that part of what you're getting at in that question is that when those things come together, there can be some kind of tension, but it doesn't always have to be that way.

So one of the things that we talk about, like the change maker, like you might imagine a change maker coming in and they really want things to be different. They want to shake things up, but it can happen in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it can happen in a way where you're thinking of them more, I guess like the way that it's been represented in the media, so like the Moms for Liberty folks or the people who are coming in to take over education or bring it back to the traditional way, or those kinds of things. But then you might have a change maker who's more equity focused. So one of the board members in our sample - she was really focused on data and she really wanted to make sure that everybody actually understood that as board members, you should know you should be able to interpret data, you should be able to evaluate it, you should be able to have these kinds of conversations. And so she started out pushing for it and doing it in a lot of different ways. And then eventually it got to a point where she didn't have to be the only person doing that.

She was somebody who, that she remember her saying, she's saying that she became the person who was doing the data things, but after a while she didn't have to speak anymore. Everybody else was actually taking on that role, and she could step back for a little bit. So it's, it can be a complicated thing when you're trying to live out these roles.

Another way of thinking about it is like the rule followers. So rule followers are people who they might be more aligned with, let's say the status quo and like somebody, a change maker might think, oh, this person is stopping me from doing the things that I want to do and the changes we need to make.

But at the same time, that rule follower might be doing that so that the district doesn't get sued, so that the things actually continue to happen the way that they should, so that the lights stay on. So there are some tensions sometimes, but the tensions don't always have to be that way.

There are lots of ways for these folks to be able to work together. And I think one of the things that we're excited about as we do this work is really investigating, what does that look like in practice? As we start to study more boards and understand like how it works in different contexts, thinking about how those roles play out in practice, are there different patterns about who plays what role?

Who's more likely to be a change maker or who's more likely to be a role follower? And then if there might be new roles that might come up that we didn't foresee in this project. So there's a lot of opportunities to think about that kind of typology and how it might expand.

Christopher Saldaña: You've both already mentioned different, ways that the tensions can play out. One being these sort of very contentious conversations that end up happening or potential attacks, verbal attacks or negotiations and compromise that happens where the changemaker who came in and said, I really care about data, and then all of a sudden their fellow board members are like, yeah, now we care about data too.

You've brought this to our attention. Is there anything that you've seen, in terms of board dynamics or board governance structures or anything like that that lends itself to either of two, either of those two or context maybe that has come up in your work?

James Bridgeforth: One of the pieces that comes up a lot is this idea that people run for school board for lots of different reasons.

They may have one particular agenda item, one particular thing that they're really passionate about, but once you get on the board, you're only one vote. There's just one of you. And so the only way for you to actually get change to happen or to get your policy in place or to get any of this, any things that you're passionate about to like work, you have to work with other people.

And so I think one of, one of the things that we heard from people is that once they get on, or if anybody who's coming on with an agenda or a big idea - they realize that boards only work they operate under consensus and they're only gonna work if we actually can work together. So as you're doing that, the change that you might wanna make happen, it doesn't happen quickly.

It's not something that's like an immediate thing. So it does take time and it takes an effort to like work together to figure out how to make that happen.

Julie Marsh: I'll just add a couple things. One is I think the role of the president. So there's a president of the board, and I think we've heard in multiple cases that role is very important in terms of having a more collaborative set of dynamics setting the tone and the rules for how to disagree respectfully and how to work together and have, share common purpose. So I think that's an important sort of structural position that maybe it doesn't get looked at enough. And then the other thing that we're just exploring is, the different electoral structures that we have in California and around the country about whether they're elected by at large or whether they're elected at a trustee level, at a geographic region. And there is some tension there when you're elected by a particular ward. The question around how you, who you represent and does that perhaps lead to some tensions and rather than understanding to work for the common good of the district, that maybe you are working to represent the people who elected you in that region.

And I think that creates some tensions as well that are worth exploring further. And I think James and I are hoping to do with some of the future work that we are doing.

Christopher Saldaña: One of the other things that you highlight in the report is the role of an impact of technology. And so James, I want to ask you, your participants described both opportunities and serious challenges with live streaming meetings and social media engagement.

What surprised you most about how technology's reshaping school board governance?

James Bridgeforth: I think similar to a lot of this work, just the nuance and the understanding that technology as one of the participants said, it's like a double-edged sword. So it's really exciting that we have live streamed board meetings.

It's exciting that people can interact and have more opportunities to engage in social media and that's really great to expand participation. One of the things that we know from a lot of the other research that either we've done or that's out there in the literature is that board meetings, ideally, are spaces for more participation and for people to really get their voices heard. But that doesn't always play out in practice. And so technology is one of those ways that you might be able to actually expand that. And we saw a lot of that during the pandemic with a lot of the hybrid meetings or the virtual meetings where people were able to engage.

And they didn't have to physically go to a board meeting; they're always at awkward times for people. Somebody might have a board meeting at from six, at six o'clock, and if you have kids or you have caregiver responsibilities, it's difficult to make it to those kind of places.

But if you are able to just log in on Zoom or if you're able to follow the live stream, then it's, it does allow for more accessibility. On the flip side of that, when you have that more accessibility, it can be really difficult for a board member to know who's watching, who's recording, who's gonna continue to take things from that recording.

So what we found with some of our board members is that they, while they were appreciative of the opportunity to be able to better engage with community members, some of them did, they were mindful of this idea of I have to think about what I say because it's not just going to be, that's not just gonna stay in that meeting. That's something that's gonna live out in the internet forever. Somebody could go back and look five years from now what did you say at this time? And they can use that in a lot of different ways. I think the other thing with social media, that was really important, is that again, it's a great tool and it allows people to have some really good engagement, but it can also lead to the spread of misinformation. It can also lead to some personal harassment and threats. There was one board member who was explaining that in their district, they had posted something about a event that seemed pretty calm, pretty relaxed, it wasn't gonna be anything too controversial, but because it spread and it got out there in social media, the board member had to really think. They got a call from the sheriff's department or the police department asking them about a threat that might have happened. So these are the kind of things that people have to deal with when they're getting into these positions.

And to your earlier point, I don't know if everybody thought this was going to be their experience when they got onto the board. You do this because you're trying to be a public servant. You really wanna give back to the community. And I don't think that doing that makes, people don't anticipate that they're gonna be death threats or they're gonna be, it's gonna be harassment or like any of those kind of things.

Christopher Saldaña: Were there any unique cases that stood out to you in terms of how technology's being leveraged in the school board meeting process or the, that sort of organizational process?

James Bridgeforth: I don't know if they're like unique ones. I think that what we saw, maybe that there are, there again is a lot of excitement in being able to engage with different types of people, particularly around if you are a board member who is more technologically savvy and like you can be on social media like that, you're able to learn more about what's going on in the community in ways that you wouldn't, if you're just doing the traditional way of going to visit schools or just going to like football games or those kind of things.

Social media does allow you to have a better - better is a strong word. It allows you to have a different or more comprehensive understanding of what's going on in different parts of the community that you might not have had access to if you're just depending on people coming to the board meeting.

Julie Marsh: Can I just add one example - one of the navigational strategies we talked about is on the record data and there were two board members who strategically used the board meetings knowing that they would be recorded to get their views down so that constituents or future voters could see what their position was.

So I think there are interesting ways that people are using this for political or otherwise reasons that I don't think you would've had if you didn't have the technology.

Christopher Saldaña: On the flip side, when you think about the sort of tension that's created by technology, have you seen any shifts in how boards are organizing themselves to mitigate that sort of phenomena?

James Bridgeforth: I don't know if boards themselves are, but definitely board members are, they're, again, being very mindful of, what am I saying? How am I, how is it coming across? Even sometimes your body language, that kind of stuff is important. So board members might be more mindful of, okay, am I, I have to really watch my face if somebody says something that I disagree with, I can't roll my eyes. I can't put my head in my hands or do anything like that because those kinds of reactions that could easily go viral. And I think that's the big piece is that being constantly aware of the fact that anything that you say or do in this space could immediately go viral online. And then next thing you know, you're on national news for something that you didn't think was a big deal or you didn't think was going to gonna impact you. But that's just the nature of technology now.

Christopher Saldaña: It's so interesting to think about your findings within the context of social media atmosphere and its intersection with national politics.

When you think about the short clips, the ways that congressional hearings are televised now, the conversations about whether there should be cameras during Supreme Court cases, and there's only audio. So it's such a fascinating phenomenon to try to understand. Speaking of national politics, I wanna ask you about the distinction that you make within the report between Big P politics, so the national partisan issues and little P politics, local power dynamics.

So Julie, how are board members navigating situations where they're being asked to take positions on national political issues that may not directly relate to education?

Julie Marsh: Yeah. Several of the board members that we followed noted deep frustration with this topic. They felt pressured to take a stand on some national issues in ways that didn't really fit what they thought, their view of the job.

So one of us was talking, one of them told us that they were being asked to speak on geopolitical issues. And they didn't feel like that had relevance on the dais, right? Another one was really uncomfortable with the board being asked to take a stand on critical race theory and book bans, but also like abortion rights and other issues.

And again, this person felt like this wasn't the role of the board and this feeling that the board was being asked to talk about things that were sexy and that wasn't what they should be; what they should be talking about were the not sexy things about the true work of the board, which was things like approving the budget and approving this.

In California we have the local control accountability plan and evaluating superintendent, and I think they were trying to navigate this in different ways and building relationships with civic leaders and trying to also help educate the public on what their role was and what it wasn't. And we heard that repeatedly, that the public often wanted them to take on this bigger role, or assumed that they had more authority than they really had.

They felt like they didn't fully understand the role of the state and how it regulates what the board can do. But I do think back to the beginning of your question around the little P politics, it's interesting that a large share of the frustration and tension that is felt politically often occurred in this little p politics domain, where unrelated to the national issues, they were experiencing tensions on their board, for example, with people who they felt were power seeking and trying to prevent their issues from getting on the agenda. And also the tried and true labor disputes or the specter of there being a labor dispute were also what caused a lot of angst for school board members.

James Bridgeforth: I don't have much to add except for I think for many board members, just in general, this is just to repeat it, this is not the thing that they expected to get into.

Sometimes you go to the board meeting and especially if you're in a, I don't know, a small rural district or a suburban district you are wondering about whether or not you're gonna do something with the football field or like how you're gonna make sure that you all are, you have enough money to hire your TK teachers or things like that.

You're not as much so worried oftentimes about some of these big national issues that are playing out. And so when you're asked to respond to that it's, it can be difficult sometimes. We have another part of this work where we're asking 'em about their perceptions on democracy and conceptions of that.

And for some of the board members, they really struggled with being able to answer those questions because they didn't see themselves as politicians in that way. They saw themselves as just, I'm just here to help out my community. I haven't really thought about being an elected official. I haven't really thought about what it means to be a democratic official.

Like that just wasn't there. That wasn't top of mind for them. And so I think it is important for us as we think about the politics, like how are we preparing them to be able to do this kind of work? Given that what they may have come into it thinking it's gonna be, is actually wildly different from the reality that we have today.

Julie Marsh: I also think it's important that we recognize that the media has sensationalized boards. Not all of the boards were addressing national issues. The community wasn't coming to these meetings demanding. There were actually quite a sizable number of these boards that were pretty quiet.

But they did have a sense of that this was happening in other places around them and that it could come to them next. But they hadn't been experiencing it in the way that we're seeing it often sensationalized in the media.

Christopher Saldaña: How did they, it's almost like I'm curious about how they drew the line how they distinguish between this, the big P and the little p politics.

Because I know that one of the issues that came up in California was the ethnic studies curriculum.

James Bridgeforth: Yeah.

Christopher Saldaña: And what would be included or not included within that. And so I'm curious when we have these sort of global or national issues that can sometimes make their way into classrooms, right? So school board members don't have the power to make meaningful decisions around what happens outside of their their districts.

But when it comes to the learning, where did, how did they navigate that process or draw the line, if at all? Maybe.

Julie Marsh: Yeah I think you're raising a good point, which is that it's a fuzzy line. There's not a clear distinction, right? 'cause national issues can become local little P politics, right?

And it's hard to know who's bringing it in even. So the community may be forcing an issue and you might not know that they're part of an organization that's been so you're right in the sense that this is, it's gray. I think some of the issues around ethnic studies also bleeds into some of the dilemmas and tensions around state versus local control. And so for a lot of folks when this became an issue, ethnic studies is your example, they felt this was imposed on it, them by the state. And so they could deflect in some ways to say like the state did that. But you're right to point out the ethnic studies issues is one of the big ones in California that maybe combines a little bit both of the big P and little P politics.

James Bridgeforth: And I think similarly when you're talking about like even if there was a lot of work around book bans and thoughts around, we needed to do that kind of stuff, and that might been what they're hearing from the community. But in California, there's a law that actually banned boards from being able to do book bands.

So even if a community member is coming, or even a large group of community members are coming and saying, oh, we really want you to do this. Board members can easily point back and say the state actually says that we can't do this. And then there have been some boards that have gone past that and said the state says this, but we're gonna go ahead and have that legal fight.

But that again, becomes such a contentious issue of how are you using your resources? Who are you listening to? Who are you representing? And so it becomes even these kinds of issues where it does seem like it might be more cut and dry. Sometimes it still gets fuzzy because you're, there's a tension there of, these people elected you and you're representing their interests. But what does that mean when you actually are tasked with overseeing the education for all students, not just the people who elected you.

Christopher Saldaña: We, I feel like we could talk about this for a whole podcast episode in and of itself, but I wanna move on to ask you about data use and the way that school board members leverage data.

So data emerged as both an expectation and a challenge. You found that while all board members reporting using data, they varied significantly in their data literacy and how they interpreted information. So what are the implications when board members are making high stakes decisions, but may lack the training to properly interpret the data they're given?

Julie Marsh: So several folks struggled with understanding, say, test results or financial data. Really admitted that. Others noted that their fellow board members struggled with these literacy, data literacy skills. And I think the implication is that they often then relied heavily on the superintendent or central office staff for the interpretation of those data and weren't necessarily making independent decisions and assessments.

And that could be very problematic if you think about certain decisions, as you mentioned, high stakes, for example, evaluating the job performance of the superintendent. What does that mean if it's the superintendent who's providing you the evidence of their performance? And so we did hear from several school board members that their colleagues were too trusting. There was a real worry about them being less able to challenge the district if you're relying on the district to give you the data and the interpretation. And one of them was telling us about how on their board, people are always praising them saying, oh, the numbers look great 'cause they're just looking at the top line. And they said, but they're not digging deeper to say like, how are kids doing at the lower bands of our results? What more should we be doing? And so there was this sense that they weren't going deep enough to disaggregate, to challenge the measures to understand things like, what's correlation versus causation? What's progress versus status, right? Like the importance of having more than one data point in time. And so there was a kind of, for some concerns around the lack of data literacy, but I wanna be fair here that there were lots of folks in our sample who were more sophisticated in their understanding of data.

And I think these tended to be folks who have experience in education. We have drilled down so much this mantra of data use in schools that they were folks who really did wanna disaggregate, particularly by issues of race, class, and gender, and really wanting to attend to opportunity and achievement gaps.

We had a couple who were pushing for other kinds of data. So one was really interested in elevating the perspectives of folks who don't necessarily show up at meetings wanting more real time information about the experiences of parents and students, for example, English learner families, to help the district understand like how are services working and where could we make improvements.

And we call that form of data literacy that we often saw in the change makers that James was talking about, critical data literacy, which was a kind of awareness of not just those general data literacy understandings, but an awareness of the role of power and avoiding deficit interpretations of data and understanding that maybe we should be blaming kids for this, but there are these broader structural issues that might be the root cause.

And they were really committed to acting on the data and the knowledge that they gained. And we have a whole paper that we've written on this and we'd be happy to tell you more. But there is a real set of folks who bring strengths, and then there's a lot of needs in this area too. And I can tell you more, we've been doing surveys statewide about this topic as well, and there definitely shows up in our statewide survey data of school board members an interest in getting more support on how to interpret these data.

Christopher Saldaña: What sort of supports are there currently, if any?

James Bridgeforth: So there are organizations that offer supports in lots of different training topics and things like that, data is one of them and so it is an opportunity, but I think what a lot of the board members, both in our pilot study and then also in our survey are saying, it's just they're looking for more like there's a baseline and they might be getting some opportunities there, but they still need more if they're gonna be able to do the work that they're trying to do.

Christopher Saldaña: So you've already both outlined a number of critical issues and supports that school board members might be both thinking about and looking for. How might we address this paradox that you've identified where the position requires increasing time and expertise while on the flip side, offering minimal compensation and significant personal stress.

James Bridgeforth: It's one of the things that's really worth noting is that in California they actually just passed legislation that actually allows districts to be able to expand compensation for board members, which is great. And there's also new legislation that requires more training in financial issues, and that's also great. I think on the flip side of allowing districts to pay more for board members, there's a tension there. When we do have declining enrollment, we have issues of like financial strain in districts for districts to then be able to vote, to give themselves a raise while they also might be voting to lay off teachers.

There's some tensions there. So I think broadly, there's something there we have to think about in terms of like, how do we continue to fund our education system and how do we make sure that board members are getting the things that they need? Yes, pay, but also training and other kinds of supports.

So when we look at those other kind of supports there are a few things that do come up. One of the big ones is just, and some of our board members said this often, and we've highlighted it a couple times today, just this idea that being on a board now is very different from how it has been in the past.

There are new things that you're having to deal with, whether it's social media, whether it's technology, whether it's just a general heightened awareness of what boards do, so there are lots of organizations that are targeting boards and saying you should, they're training community members to go and speak at board meetings and those kinds of things.

Knowing that it's really important for any kind of support that they're gonna get, that they really know how to deal with the challenges of today, not necessarily the challenges of what it was like 20 years ago or 30 years ago. And so when we look at that, some of the things that they are looking for and this is, has really come out in the statewide survey that we've done, there's been a lot of interest in a few different areas. One, when we think about evaluating curricula or programs or those kinds of things, board members need more support in being able to do that because if they're gonna be tasked with deciding in a really tight financial era, what services we keep, what programs we keep, what curriculum to buy. They're gonna need to know how to do that. And technically, yes, the central office does do a lot of that work, but for thinking from a more critical approach, it is important for board members to also understand that so that they're making the best and most well-informed decisions.

Similarly, when we talk about these issues of like navigating political tension, board members are looking for more support in that area, definitely social media interactions, navigating all types of the legal guidance around the ever changing federal landscape and the kinds of things that are shifting literally every single day, minute by minute.

So board members aren't always aware of those things. They're getting a lot of support to interpret those decisions in a way that is gonna give them the best opportunity to make those decisions. So there's just a lot that they're looking for. And I think our work is helpful in that it's identifying those things so that if there are folks who do want to do that work, they have a, almost like a roadmap of here are the things that board members are looking for, these are the kinds of supports that they need if we're gonna live up to this idea of like how to actually do high quality local control.

Julie Marsh: I think they're also looking for networking opportunities. That was another area that some of them in the absence of other kinds of formal training, they're finding it very valuable to meet with other board members in either in their area or in similar kinds of districts to get information and learn things.

So we might think about other ways of supporting boards that don't require formal training or right, so what are some of the other ways. Mentoring was also brought up as a really important avenue that's available for some and not others. So I think it needs more discussion. And I think, but your paradox point is important because some of these folks are running unopposed and there's been a big issue around large numbers of districts where there's no one on the ballot or there's no one running against them.

And so we don't wanna disincentivize people from running. Because we're gonna now increase the requirements. Yet they need that support. And we don't want people coming in not understanding their role, how things work, how to interpret data. So it's a challenging topic. It's just a very challenging issue right now that we need to talk more about if we, as James said, we're gonna realize the promise of a just local democracy and governance that we all uphold as an important tenant of our democratic institutions and society. Can I add one more thing, that this work is collaborative and so first of all that James is at the University of Delaware.

Another colleague, Miguel Casar is at the University of Alabama and Jacob Alonso, Akunna Uka and Laura Mulfinger were also co-authors of this work and we have a larger team working as well. So I don't want it to be attributed just to the two of us on the podcast.

Christopher Saldaña: Thank you Drs. Marsh and Bridgeforth for being on this month's podcast.

As always, we hope you're safe and healthy. And remember, for the latest analysis on education policy, you should subscribe to the NEPC newsletter at nepc.colorado.edu.