This study examined partisan elections in large urban school districts in Canada. It investigated the extent to which the existence of political parties in a school board election serves to aggregate the educational attitudes and opinions of candidates. Also, it investigated the extent to wbich political parties aggregate differences in the personal characteristics of candidates. Further, it measured the extent to which their educational opinions and attitudes are related to their personal characteristics. The study used information collected from 29 candidates who ran for office in a 1978 Vancouver (British Columbia) school board election. The results showed that the existence of political parties does serve to aggregate the educational attitudes and opinions of candidates running for school board office. The parties present the voters with distinctly different ideological and policy positions on educational questions. In addition, little relationship exists between personal characteristics of candidates and their educational attitudes and opinions. Finally, the paper concludes that certain advantages do exist for partisan school board elections in large urban school districts. (Author/LD)