School Boards in America: A Flawed Exercise in Democracy

Local school boards in the United States spend almost $600 billion of the public’s money and employ millions of Americans. They have a prime role, along with the home, in shaping the future for the country’s young. Yet the more than 14,000 boards of education are obscure and most people have not the vaguest notion of how they operate and what impact they have. School Boards in America aims to provide a wide audience – educators and college students, board members, policymakers, parents and other taxpayers, and just about anyone interested in public affairs – with an inside view that will forever affect the ways in which they look at public schools and how they are governed.