The Election of Blacks To School Boards in North Carolina

• Author: Thomas Gill Watts,Theodore S. Arrington
• Published date: 01 December 1991
• Date: 01 December 1991
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591299104400416
• Subject Matter: Articles

THE
ELECTION OF BLACKS TO SCHOOL BOARDS
IN NORTH
CAROLINA
THEODORE S. ARRINGTON, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
and
THOMAS GILL WATTS, Iredell County North Carolina School System
here
is consensus in the literature that blacks are equitably
representated or even overrepresented on school boards in urban
JL- areas, which is quite different from the pattern on city coun-
cils. Welch and Karnig (1978) first studied this question, using the 43
largest city school districts in the United States. Their findings contra-
dict conclusions based mostly on city council data. They discovered
that blacks did best in at-large systems and worst in mixed district/
at-large systems. They also found that blacks did well under systems
in which the school board is appointed by other local officials. Using
the Engstrom and McDonald (1981) methodolgy to measure the rela-
tionship of black representation and black population and a somewhat
larger sample of 89 large city school districts, Meier and England
(1984) confirmed the conventional wisdom of the superiority of dis-
tricts for electing blacks. Robinson and England (1981) had two sam-
ples : one of 173 urban school districts and a separate sample of 75
districts with at least 15 percent black population. They also con-
firmed that district systems were more equitable for blacks. Stewart,
England, and Meier (1989) further confirmed these findings using a
sample of 174 U.S. school districts with a minimum enrollment of
15,000 and at least 1 percent black students.
We
accept the Engstrom and McDonald methodology here, because
it seems to have become the standard approach for this kind of study.
We explore the impact of various kinds of elections, the socioeconomic
factors suggested by the authors cited above, partisanship, and election
timing. Our sample consists of all of the school districts in North
Carolina for which data could be obtained. Most school districts in
this state are small and rural, giving us a very different sample from
that used in previous studies.
Received: June 12, 1990
Revision Received: November 2, 1990
Accepted for Publication: November 6, 1990

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DATA COLLECTION
In 1987 there were 140 separate school districts in North Carolina:
One in each of the counties and 40 in cities. These boards differed in
election procedures, term of office, size, and numerous other variables.
We found no systematic differences between city and county school
districts. Some of these school districts were small (a few hundred vot-
ers), while others encompassed large urban areas (the largest, 250,000
voters). The black proportion of the registered voters varies from zero
to 57 percent, but only 6 school districts have a majority of black reg-
istered voters and only 26 have less than 5 percent black. We use voter
registration figues...