Prince Edward County’s method of selecting school board members will be decided Tuesday by the citizenry. That’s exactly how an important debate, with compelling arguments on both sides, should be settled.

We commend the grassroots efforts of Heather Edwards and other volunteers who succeeded where others have failed during past years in getting the question where it belongs: on the ballot.

Voters will decide whether to keep the current, appointed system or replace it with direct election of school board members. The change — advocated eloquently by senior staff writer Jordan Miles elsewhere on this page — is tempting.

Everyone agrees Prince Edward’s public schools are not what they should be. Current and prior school boards bear at least some of the responsibility for a school division that consistently lags the rest of Virginia — and even some neighboring communities — in all objective measurements of educational quality. In a so-called “knowledge economy” such as Prince Edward — the home of two fine institutions of higher learning — our public schools should rival the very best in Virginia and the nation.

Unfortunately, there is no shortcut to that kind of excellence. No evidence points to elected boards as a catalyst for improvement in public schools. Many communities have tried. The great irony of a seemingly democratic change like direct election of school board members is that the pool of prospective public servants actually shrinks rather than expands. Right in our back yard, Buckingham and Cumberland voters routinely have no choice of who will represent them on the school board. Some seats are decided by write-in votes because no one had enough interest to even qualify to be on the ballot.

That’s because school board service is a thankless job. It’s hard enough to find good people to appoint to the board. Ask them to spend money and knock on doors for the “privilege” of serving, and the pool will get even smaller. Voters will often be left with single-issue candidates motivated by this or that curriculum change or by the opportunity to exact revenge on an administrator who made an unpopular decision.

After careful consideration, we believe the change, while well-intentioned, would do more harm than good. We encourage voters to reject it at the polls on Tuesday.