A statue outside of the Columbus City Schools Board of Education Administration Offices on Thursday. Credit: Daniel Bush | Campus Photo Editor
Vladimir Kogan has been writing about school boards since he was in high school.
As the editor of his high school paper and then a college journalist covering local education in San Diego, Kogan has been inseparable from the topic of school governance for most of his adult life. After earning his Ph.D, he has been a professor of political science at Ohio State since 2012.
Kogan is the author of a new book titled, “No Adult Left Behind: How Politics Hijacks Education Policy and Hurts Kids.” Kogan said that his thesis argues that current models of school governance “mostly prioritizes the interest of adults, often at the expense of kids.”
In Ohio specifically, Kogan said one reason this occurs is because school board elections — which are held in years that don’t have other races — see limited voter turnout, especially from parents of school-aged kids.
Those outcomes can have a negative impact on the quality of education in various ways, Kogan said.
“The modal voter is an elderly person who hasn’t had school-aged kids in a long time, and so we shouldn’t be surprised, necessarily, that the considerations that drive their voting behavior are not the same considerations of parents,” Kogan said.
Supported by over a decade of research funded by the Spencer Foundation, Kogan’s book outlines the negative effects these elections can have, as well as potential solutions.
One solution could be holding elections at the same time as other elections, citing races held on even years having better turnout. Additionally, Kogan said that informing voters of the school quality, achievement data and year-to-year growth would help keep them aware.
“We can also change the information environment,” Kogan said. “I know one of the challenges right now is school quality is not particularly salient, it’s actually really hard to know, [if] your school [is] doing a good job or not.”
Kogan suggests printing Ohio school report card data next to school board candidates on ballots to “really encourage voters to focus on the educational quality rather than some of the adult concerns that tend to drive a lot of the politics at the local level.”
Additionally, Kogan said that the data should include measures of student performance improvement overall.
Another solution would be eliminating school board elections, many of which have uncontested candidates — and emphasizing school choice as an option for parents to more directly exercise their rights to force school districts to take notice and enact change, Kogan said.
Kogan said that allowing parents to choose which school they will place their children in will incentivize the district to create a more competitive atmosphere.
Political issues can affect productive learning, according to Kogan. He said that many issues that arise and are brought into conversations around school policy, from Covid-19 policies to identity politics. The most vocal people are often adults without children.
“I think one of the reasons why these culture war issues really became a focal point is because for people without kids, it was a symbolic issue, it was something that really did not directly impact them,” Kogan said.
Kogan said that parents are systematically different because they don’t directly think about partisan issues, but more on how decisions will affect their children.
“If those decisions were made primarily by parents rather than the broader community, it’s possible that [debates] wouldn’t have [been] as heated, and it’s certainly possible that policy would have been different,” Kogan said.
Kogan’s book, “No Adult Left Behind: How Politics Hijacks Education Policy and Hurts Kids,” is available through Ohiolink on the Ohio State Library website.
