Navigating uncharted waters: relational trust and evidence use among school board members and administrators during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Politics, context, and culture are critical to the understanding of how education policy reform is influenced by evidence use. Different types of research evidence use occur depending on the specific problems being addressed and on the cultural and organizational context. Relational trust is critically important in the public education policymaking process and plays an important role in how evidence is accessed and used. The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2020, was a period of unprecedented crisis and radical change in education. Leaders operated in crisis mode, forced to make rapid decisions about things that were not in their normal “wheelhouse.” These decisions were highly politicized, and local school district leaders were under extreme pressure from people on both sides of the issues. Shortly after the onset of the pandemic, there were protests across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Consequently, school districts were under newly intensified pressure to articulate their stance on anti-racism. The public pressure that local school district leaders encountered during the pandemic provides a unique and intense window into how evidence use and relational trust impact decisions. This study consists of case studies of two purposefully selected K-12 districts in New Jersey that were successful in providing in-person instruction to students during the 2020-2021 school year. Leaders used a wide range of evidence in their decision-making during this crisis. Studying and comparing Suburbantown and Urbantown (pseudonyms used for the districts in this research) over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic reveals how district context, relational trust, and networks affect evidence use.