Grade the Board is a civic transparency initiative built on a simple belief: communities deserve clear, honest information about the people governing their public schools.
America's 13,000+ school boards govern $800 billion in public education spending annually, make consequential decisions about curriculum, staffing, and facilities, and shape the educational outcomes of 50 million children. Yet most school board elections happen off-cycle — often in May, with little media coverage and single-digit voter turnout.
There is no consistent, publicly available framework for evaluating how a school board is actually performing. A parent trying to assess their board must hunt across a dozen different government databases, interpret raw data without context, and has no way to compare their district to others facing similar challenges. Most simply don't — and boards govern largely without scrutiny.
Grade the Board exists to change that. We believe informed communities make better decisions at the ballot box — and that school boards, like other elected bodies, perform better when they know someone is paying attention.
Every Grade the Board report card is built entirely from government public records: state assessment data from education agencies, financial records from bond review boards and district audits, and campaign finance reports filed with ethics commissions. We do not conduct surveys, rely on proprietary data, or make editorial judgments about policy positions.
Our methodology is fully documented and publicly available. Every data point is cited. Every grade can be traced back to a specific government source that any person can access and verify independently. We will correct errors promptly when they're identified.
Every data point comes from government sources available to the public. No proprietary inputs. No surveys. No editorial assumptions about quality.
Every district is graded the same way. We do not adjust the framework based on who the district is, what policies they've adopted, or who asks us to.
Methodology is documented. Sources are cited. We publish the underlying scores alongside every letter grade so people can evaluate our work.
The Independence Score measures financial dependence — not ideology. A board funded by a union PAC and a board funded by a charter advocacy PAC both score based on the structure of their funding, not what those funders believe.
San Antonio Independent School District is the first district fully graded on all three dimensions — Academic, Finance, and Community. The pilot was developed to validate the methodology against real data, identify edge cases (like unopposed trustees), and demonstrate what a complete GTB report card looks like in practice.
The SAISD pilot is live and public. We're expanding to additional Texas districts and planning to extend the framework to other states as funding and capacity allow. If you're interested in seeing your district graded, sign up for notifications.
Grade the Board does not endorse or oppose any candidate, trustee, policy, or political party. We do not take positions on curriculum, staffing decisions, or educational philosophy. We grade the measurable outcomes of board governance — student achievement, financial management, and democratic accountability — using data that is already public.
We are not a watchdog organization in the traditional sense. We don't conduct investigations or publish exposés. We publish structured, consistent grades derived from public records, and we let communities draw their own conclusions.
Questions about methodology, data corrections, or getting your district graded? We want to hear from you.
We're expanding beyond San Antonio. Enter your email and we'll reach out when grades are published for districts in your area.