Civic engagement and progressive ambition

To understand progressive ambition—the desire to seek higher office—one must first consider the process of becoming involved in civic life generally. School board members typically receive no compensation, making this potentially labor-intensive work a form of volunteering. The work of Verba, Schlozman and Brady (1995) is particularly helpful in understanding the processes at work to encourage and discourage civic and political engagement. In their Civic Volunteerism Model, there are three categories of prerequisites: skills, motivation, and recruitment [7]. In order to participate in civic and political life one must have the ability (to be able to communicate and to organize, for example). Volunteers are often distinguished by a number of human capital traits that can serve as resources to aid their work [8,9]. A person must also want to participate; something either innate in them or an experience might motivate them to want to get involved. A number of traits, including parental influences, socialization, concern for others and prosocial orientations, can contribute to this motivational aspect [9–11]. Often people are recruited into service, and in fact, some do not participate until someone invites them to become involved. Studies have found that being solicited substantially increases the probability of participating in politics, volunteering, and political activism [7,12–16].

Once elected, what leads people to pursue higher elected office? Scholars have been exploring this question for more than four decades [17–19]. In the past two decades, there has been robust work to understand the gender, race, and class dimensions of progressive ambition [20–28]. Another vein of inquiry has focused on the motivation piece of this puzzle, trying to understand the nuanced role that ambition plays [23,24,28].

School boards as a springboard to higher office

The prospect of running an effective campaign can seem daunting. The structural barriers to standing for election to state legislature or the U.S. Congress are high, such as available time, money or access to financial donors, and, for some offices, being vetted by the party organizations. However, these obstacles are lower for local races and perhaps lowest for school board trustees. School board races are largely nonpartisan. The geographic area covered by a trustee is usually smaller than a legislative district. Often candidates are people who have developed a reputation in the community through volunteer work, professional networks, and other forms of civic engagement. If a person wants to get into electoral politics, the school board may be an attractive place to start. Having prior elected office on one’s resume also provides an important boost to being a viable candidate. One has experience campaigning, a deeper network of supporters and potential donors, and name recognition among voters–all of which are important to electoral success.

The potential for school boards to provide entry into politics can lead school boards to be a particularly relevant site for investigating candidate emergence and progressive ambition. A study of Texas school board trustees found that candidates for school boards regularly campaign on their civic and volunteer work, though with interesting gender differences [29]. Men came to office through traditional avenues of public life: membership in civic groups such as Rotary, on boards of non-profit organizations, and through volunteering (often in the school setting). While women had somewhat similar experiences, they were more likely to center their discussion on issues (school policies, curriculum, teacher/personnel issues) as motivating factors to running for office. Another study finds that successful female candidates almost uniformly had specific school related volunteer experience (like booster club or PTA board positions) whereas male candidates did not [30].

Additionally, demographic differences, especially gender, can be important factors in how school board experiences translate into progressive ambition. In a study of school board trustees in Pennsylvania, the author found men and women differed most on the factors that influence their progressive ambition. Among men, education, efficacy, qualifications, and personal networks (family, friends, co-workers, spouse) feature prominently [28]. For women, education is not significant, but both personal and political networks (elected officials, activists, and party elites) are important predictors of progressive ambition. Interestingly, she also finds that the levels of support in both personal and political networks are lower for women than for men. Race can also matter, with minority candidates less likely to win school board election campaigns; one study in Ontario found that while racial minorities made up about 20% of candidates, only 6% became elected trustees [31].

Pandemic politics and hyperpolarization

While we understand quite a bit about the gendered nature of political ambition, and a bit about how that plays out among elected school board members, we are just learning about the effects of the pandemic on politics. Our understanding of school boards as entry sites for progressive ambition may need to change if the climate around school board meetings becomes one fraught with sanctions and deterrents. School board elections are generally not partisan, and early studies found few demands of constituents beyond taxes to filter to trustees [32]. Partisan discourse is increasing, however, as national trends are felt locally [33,34]. Conflict among trustees might also be related to low school performance [35]. Recent reports and scholarship have documented that partisanship affected views on going back to school online or in person in fall 2020 [36,37]. Additionally, political affiliation was highly correlated with views about the desirability of children returning to in-person learning [34] and with states’ choices about lockdowns [38]. By the fall of 2020, most states left the decision about whether to return to in-person learning up to the localities, and there is evidence from Michigan that these local decisions were colored by partisanship [39]. Republicans were much more in favor of children physically returning to class.

School board meetings have also turned into sites of activism. While social movements can and do focus on policy changes, many also focus on cultural elements, such as winning hearts and minds, affecting public opinion, or changing everyday lifestyles and behaviors [40,41]. Activists have specifically focused attention on school board meetings as a way to articulate and contest various visions for what values and types of knowledge should be encouraged or banned. This has turned routine meetings into sites of contention and has raised attention and pressure on school board members, whose votes are not just a matter of crafting school policies, but seen by some groups as a referendum on the types of beliefs and attitudes that should be promulgated in society. This new environment has benefits in terms of elevating the perceived impact of elected school board trustees’ actions (potentially making the work feel more influential), but can also come with added scrutiny and pressure (making the work more unpleasant or stressful). Despite nationwide attention on educational policies as a reflection of cultural priorities and activism, there is surprisingly little sociological work on school boards themselves.

To help understand any new effects on progressive ambition that might emerge from serving on school boards in a hyperpolarized atmosphere, we look at the case study of Texas, which is known for its school board battles. How might progressive ambition be affected in a potentially contentious environment? Are all individuals affected in the same way by their school board service, or do demographic, political, and geographic traits shape differences in whether people are inspired or dissuaded from pursuing higher office?

Case study

To investigate our research questions, we selected the case study of Texas, which has made both statewide and national news due to contentious political events at the school governance and school board levels [1,2,5,6]. It is important to note that not all Texas school boards experience controversy surrounding their decisions. However, overall, the state does tend to be a flash point for issues with known political divisions that arouse strong opinions and emotions. As an example, between 2021–2022, Texas removed more books from its school library shelves than any other state in the U.S., with most of the removed books discussing issues such as race, racism, abortion and LGBTQ issues [6]. Debates about book bans, as well as other topics such as covid-era policies, school shootings and safety, sex education, sexual orientation, and transgender students’ rights can then spill into local school board meetings [1,2,5,6]. Texas is also a sizable case study, with over 30 million residents, and high levels of racial and ethnic diversity, particularly in regard to Latino Texans [4]. The state has over five million public school students and a mix of school districts of various sizes in urban, rural, and suburban areas [3]. Thus, this case study provides us with a large and diverse set of respondents for both our quantitative and qualitative data collection. In Texas, the boards of independent school districts are elected positions charged with governing and overseeing the education in their local school district. In general, school boards in the United States have a fair amount of power and autonomy over local school governance [42]. Thus, the conclusions from this study are most applicable to countries in which school boards are elected positions. It is less applicable to situations with appointed school board positions or non-democratic countries that tightly control and regulate their educational systems to ensure pro-state educational stances [43]. Further, since our key outcome is interest in running for political office, it is most applicable to democratic countries that have elected positions.

Participants

To investigate our research questions, we sent an online survey to all individuals with an available email address who were serving as an elected school board trustee for Texas public school districts in 2020–2021; this did not include members who were elected in the fall of 2021. This project was approved by the University of Texas at Arlington’s Institutional Review Board (Protocol 2021–0660), no minors were included in the study, written informed consent was obtained, and recruitment occurred between August 3, 2021 and November 5, 2021. Our response rate was 12.8%. We then dropped any participants who did not complete the survey, resulting in 380 total respondents. We provide data on the traits of participants in Table 1. Overall, our respondents were majority male (60%), white (75%), married (90%), employed (74%), and educated with a college degree or higher (79%). About half had children living at home (54%), and about half were 55 or older (49%). Most had household incomes higher than $100,000 (74%). Of the respondents, 41% attended meetings of political groups and 40% were on school boards in large suburbs or cities. About half are Republican (53%), while the rest are split between Democrats (20%), Independents (24%), and Other (3%). We also collected data on district type and gender to further assess how well our sample mirrors the population of trustees surveyed. The representativeness of our sample in terms of district type is quite good. For all but three district types our sample is within 2–3 percentage points of the representation of district types in the population surveyed. We have a slight overrepresentation of trustees from rural distant districts (less than 4 percentage points), somewhat larger overrepresentation of trustees from large suburban districts (almost 8 percentage point difference) and an underrepresentation of trustees from distant towns (just over 6 percentage points). The only other demographic data we have for both the population and the sample is gender. The population of trustees surveyed is 54.7% women and our sample is 40.2% women. Respondents from larger school districts are more representative of the gender composition of those districts than respondents from smaller districts.

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Table 1. Descriptive statistics for each group, mean (SD) or %.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311054.t001

Measures

Analysis

The analysis we present here unfolds in several stages. First, we present information about each of the three groups of school board trustees. Further, we provide information on the nature of progressive ambition by looking at what positions the various groups might run for in the future. Next, we conduct a multinomial logistic regression on interest in running for higher office after serving on the school board, comparing those who state they were not affected to those more likely to seek higher office, as well as those less likely to seek higher office. We also plot the predicted probabilities of falling into the more ambitious, less ambitious, or unaffected groups. We used Stata 15 for our statistical analysis and listwise deletion for missing data. We also conduct a qualitative analysis on the 147 open-ended responses to two questions: explaining why service on school board made it more or less likely to run for office; or what else respondents would like to share. This allows us to take a deeper dive into the reasons, motivations, and mechanisms driving how school board service has affected respondents’ political ambition.

Responses to our open-ended questions were coded independently by two members of the research team employing grounded theory methodology [44–46]. Each author coded responses to the open-ended questions line-by-line and tagged responses with codes reflecting the sentiments expressed. After the initial creation of codes, the two authors who coded independently compared assessments, resolved any differences in coding and created a uniform set of codes that reflected their analyses.

Demographic differences across levels of progressive ambition

The descriptive results provide demographic portraits of these three groups; the percentages discussed below are significantly different for each group (relative to the proportion of the two other groups combined) using a two-sample test of proportions. Additionally, Table 1 presents a breakdown of demographic differences for each of these three groups.

Respondents unaffected by their time on the school board are significantly more likely than the other groups to be to be older and to have previously served in an elected position. Specifically, 58% are 55 or older (while the other two groups only have 35% over 55). The unaffected group has the lowest rates of being employed, with almost a third being retired (28%) and are less likely to have children living at home. The not affected group is also more likely to have served in elected positions before (16%), twice the rate of the other two groups. They also have the lowest rates of being a member of a political group. They are also more likely to be embedded in small towns and rural areas, with the lowest percentage in city districts (at 33%) compared to those more (48%) or less (53%) likely to run.

Respondents more likely to run for higher office after their time on the school board are significantly less likely to have previously served in elected positions before relative to the other groups. However, they are more likely to be in political groups (53%). They are also significantly more likely to be Democrats (32%) with over twice the rate of those less likely to run for office. They are employed at higher rates (88%). This group also had the lowest mean of feeling unqualified (1.88) compared to the other two groups (≈2.5), showing their relatively high levels of confidence.

Like those respondents whose progressive ambition was positively affected, respondents less likely to run for higher office after their time on the school board are also more likely to live in a city (53%). Thus, those in cities were far more likely to have their ambition levels affected by school board service (positively or negatively) than trustees located in smaller towns or rural areas. Those stating they were less interested in running for future office also tended to be the most privileged of the three groups, with larger percentages having high income (over $100,000) (85%) or a college degree or higher (89%) than those in the unaffected or energized to run for office groups. This group had the highest average concerns about negative campaigns and was the most likely of the three groups to agree that COVID lowered their ambition.

Do school board trustees have progressive ambition?

Next, we examine whether school board trustees in Texas exhibit progressive ambition. We asked trustees the likelihood on a seven-point scale of their running for a series of higher offices: City Council, Mayor, State Representative, State Senator, Judge or District Attorney, U.S. House, U.S. Senate, Governor (or other statewide office), and President (See Table 2).

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Table 2. Progressive ambition by political office.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311054.t002

Overall, most trustees are not likely to run for higher office. The modal category across all offices is “extremely unlikely.” Also, as one would expect, the likelihood of running for a future office is greatest at the municipal or state representative level. For example, the top three positions that respondents replied they were extremely, somewhat, or likely to run for were state representative (17%), city council (16%), and state senator (13%).

We then examined these trends separately for those trustees for whom their school board service increased their progressive ambition: those that responded that it made them more likely to run for higher office (See Table 3). There are clear differences in this subgroup of trustees. If we compare across offices in all versions of likely to run, we see that while city council remains popular (39.7%), state representative is an office for which these progressively ambitious trustees are interested in running (43.2%). State senator is more popular (34.5%) than mayor (24.4%). In terms of affecting policy changes, this distribution of interest shows a political sophistication and knowledge of policy making (legislative bodies) versus policy implementation (mayor). What about for those trustees whose service has discouraged them from seeking higher office? As one might expect, those who reported that their service decreased their ambition were also not likely to report being interested in any of the offices on which we measured ambition.

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Table 3. Progressive ambition for respondents with increased ambition, by office.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311054.t003

Predicting increased ambition or decreased ambition

While the descriptive statistics indicate substantive differences in the demographic make-up and progressive ambitions of these three groups, multinomial logistic regression can assess how specific traits predict our outcomes. To understand how people might be affected by their school board service in different ways, we ran models to compare those for whom service increased their ambition as well as those for whom being a trustee decreased their progressive ambition, to those who reported it had no effect.

Increased ambition.

Both the quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal a distinct group of trustees whose progressive ambition was heightened by their service. When we model the likelihood of being in this group relative to the unaffected, we learn that one key factor is being a Democrat (b = 1.13, p = .0096, see Table 4). The predicted probability of being in the increased ambition group increases from 17% for non-Democrats to 37% for Democrats (see Fig 1). We also see significant positive effects on ambition for white respondents (b = 1.00, p = .02) and for those who live in school districts in cities or large suburbs (b = .91, p = .0099). One possibility is that school board meetings in larger cities could have attracted more attention (including from activists), making them more public battlegrounds than their rural counterparts. This could have had a galvanizing effect, relative to the comparison group of being unaffected by school board service. The predicted probabilities also reveal higher rates of progressive ambition for those in cities or large suburbs (28%) compared to those in smaller towns or rural areas (16%). Two traits decreased the probability of being in the more likely to run for higher office. Unsurprisingly, feeling unqualified for higher office had a negative effect on progressive ambition (b = -.777, p < .001) but having more experience—serving in an elected position prior to running for school board—also had a negative effect (b = -1.73, p = .0095). The predicted probability of being in the more likely to run group goes from 6% for those previously elected to 23% for those never before elected to a position. This could be because more experienced political officials saw the effects of the COVID era on the school board as “business as usual” and were more likely to fall into the unaffected group. But it also suggests that those most energized were political newcomers.

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Fig 1. Predicted probabilities of ambition levels with CI (95%).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311054.g001

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Table 4. Multinomial logistic regression predicting school board effect on ambition.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311054.t004

Now that we have a sense of the kinds of trustees who are in this group, how did they explain their increased ambition? While the survey data provide a snapshot of overall trends, the qualitative comments provide an opportunity to take a deeper dive and look at the content of their ambition to serve in higher office.

Among respondents for whom service on the school board increased their interest in running for political office, one common reason was a desire to make a difference. As school boards become a battleground for larger cultural issues and gain public scrutiny, service could be viewed as an opportunity rather than a burden. While having people fighting in school board meetings is far from ideal, it does indicate that people feel deeply about issues and that there are real consequences for students at stake. For these respondents, rather than scare them off, the school board experiences inspired them to do more. One respondent summarizes, “It’s made me realize that one person CAN make a difference, and that if I have an issue with something, there are likely others that feel the same as I do.” We see this language mirrored in several comments, such as those stating, “I see what a change I can make” and “I see how to make a difference.” This could then translate into progressive ambition, where they now have excitement for making even more of an impact in higher office. Many saw a need in politics for their abilities and believed that achieving higher office would allow them to be even more effective. For example, one respondent noted that “I believe some of the things I would like to accomplish require a higher level of governance to attain.” In another example, when asked to explain his progressive ambition, a school board trustee states: “Because the work that needs to be done to have a true impact on students is at a state level.” Thus, progressive ambition is fostered, in part, because respondents see expanded possibilities through higher office for implementing the changes they seek.

For those more likely to run for higher office, another related theme was the need for quality elected officials in it for the right reasons. Not all trustees were deflated by the negative atmosphere; some presented the counterargument that they needed to work in elected office to contribute in positive ways when others did not. They expressed the desire to continue in politics to serve as a counter presence to others, such as a respondent who states, “I believe there needs to be a voice for those who can see the best in humanity and not pander to fear and incite hatred.” Another trustee echoes this sentiment with, “We need more people with a heart of service and less politics.” The emphasis here is on providing a different perspective or approach than the negativity or hyperpolarization seen in some school board meetings. Similarly, respondents sometimes framed their progressive ambition in terms of feeling that there was a responsibility to have more qualified, competent individuals in office. For example, one respondent states, “The need for good governance in all elected posts is much more apparent than before.” Here, the focus includes the need to run for office, not just to provide skills and honest intentions, but to prevent other less qualified or ill-intentioned candidates from achieving office and power.

Finally, among this inspired group, there were a few who felt responsible for serving as a voice for others. For example, one woman states, “It has helped to be a voice for those that feel they have none.” Another school board member goes into further detail about this sentiment and highlights the importance of speaking for those who might be underrepresented. She states:

I represent a group of the population that has been historically marginalized when it comes to having a seat at the table. Seeing the value of my representation has motivated me and opened me up to the duty I have to sit at other tables where decisions are being made that affect everyone, including segments of the community that are often times overlooked.

For these individuals, being in a position of power allowed them to bring in underrepresented perspectives and to help counter exclusion. Ultimately, the respondents energized for seeking higher office saw the potential to create change, ensure the right people were in the job, and act on behalf of others. The school board climate was an inspiration rather than a deterrent.