The “Why” Of School Systems & School Boards
School systems exist to improve student outcomes. That is the only reason for which school systems exist. School systems do not exist to serve founders, provide status, or benefit patrons. Other types of boards do and that’s perfectly fine, but school boards do not. School systems do not exist to have great buildings, have happy parents, have balanced budgets, have satisfied teachers, provide student lunches, provide employment in the county/city, or anything else. Those are all means -- and incredibly important and valuable means at that -- but none of them are the ends; none of those are why we have school systems. They are all inputs, not outcomes. None of those are measures of what students know or are able to do. School systems exist for one reason and one reason only: to improve student outcomes.
An immediate challenge is that throughout the community there are many ideas about which student outcomes -- which measures of what students know and are able to do -- should be focused on (I refer to this as the community’s “vision”) and which means to accomplish the vision should/shouldn’t be used (I refer to this as the community’s “values”). A school system can’t be effective if it’s trying to pursue a myriad of incoherent visions while implementing a cacophony of conflicting values. So the decision was made to select a group of individuals who would collectively represent the community’s vision and values. We refer to this group as a school board. The school board exists to represent the vision and values of the community.
Why The “Why” Isn’t Enough Without An Effective “How”
Even though school boards have an inherent desire to see improvements in student outcomes, comprehensive analysis of hundreds of hours of school board meetings from across the nation reveals that few school boards invest a meaningful percentage of their time in behaviors that most correlate with improvements in student outcomes. Simply put, the design of most school board meetings and processes is focused on managing the adult inputs, not governing for student outcomes. In the absence of a coherent framework for what it means to “govern”, school board members often view the school board as being one layer above management. But that is a flawed understanding of governance; in reality the proper alignment of the school board is one layer below community. This sounds like mere semantics, but the difference in mindset manifests in wildly divergent adult behaviors in the boardroom -- the board positioning itself as inward focused super manager of adult inputs rather than a community vision- and values-focused protector of student outcomes.
This clarifies why 100 years of school board orthodoxy has often failed to protect children from unintentional, but very real, educational malpractice. When school boards approach “governing” the way it’s always been done they -- again, typically without intending to -- create school systems where improvements in student outcomes occur either in spite of the school board, or not at all. This norm is deeply ingrained in school board culture nationwide and requires dramatic transformation in adult behavior. But change is often difficult -- particularly for public officials who are often punished for any significant change in direction from the status quo.
The “How” Of Effective School Board Governance
This leads to a simple axiom: student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change. Or said differently when placed in the context of governing: the culture, patterns of behavior, that are exhibited in the boardroom can reasonably be expected to be found paralleled in the classroom. This concept, which offers a summation of the current literature and research on school board behaviors and their relationship to improving student outcomes, is as elegant as it can be confounding. But it points to five recurring themes in the research literature -- about effective governing bodies in general, and effective school boards specifically -- regarding which adult behavior changes in the boardroom are most correlated with improvements in student outcomes in the classroom:
Focus Mindset
Does the school board distinguish between adult inputs and student outcomes? Have school board members embraced that adult behavior change will need to begin with them?
Clarify Priorities
What will the school board direct the school system to focus on? How does the school board effectively communicate the community’s priorities?
Monitor Progress
How will the school board know if the school system is improving over time relative to the priorities? How will the school board know if a significant strategic pivot is required?
Align Resources
How will the school board ensure that the priorities are the primary focus of resource allocation? How will the school board change its behaviors to center the priorities in its own work?
Communicate Results
How will the school board update the community regarding the priorities?
How will the school board communicate with the community regarding its role?
Focus Mindset
To Focus Mindset requires that the school board leads from the stance that school systems only exist to improve student outcomes, that student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change, starting with the school board, and that school boards exist to represent the vision and values of the community. Inside of these views of the world, the school board becomes so intensely focused on improving student outcomes by changing its own behavior that it becomes impossible for the school board to be distracted by unaligned adult inputs, serve an interest that is not the community’s, or be seduced into creating a culture of blame. By definition, if a school board is not engaged in continuous improvement routines or spends its time blaming anyone for lower-than-promised student performance, then the school board is not doing the work to Focus Mindset.
Clarify Priorities
Because the function of the school board is to represent the vision and values of the community, any effective system of governance must support the board at adhering closely to the community’s vision and values. But even though the school board has far fewer members than the community as a whole -- typically around 5 to 9 members -- the school board members may still disagree on what the community's vision and values truly are. If school boards aren't intentional, they can start focusing on the wants and wishes of individual community members rather than the vision and value of the community as a whole. To resolve this and to create a way of holding the school system accountable, the school board as a whole adopts two special types of policy. It adopts Goals that reflect the community's vision. And it adopts Guardrails that describe the community values that must be protected while in pursuit of the Goals.
Because the intention of Goals is to reveal the community’s vision for its students’ outcomes, Goals are only about student outcomes -- what the community wants its students to know and be able to do. Ideal Goals will be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, results-focused, and time-bound), will describe what the community wants its students to know and/or be able to do, and will number between one and five (we generally recommend three). Goals describe what the school system is trying to accomplish. Examples of Goals include:
The percentage of students from our Pre-K program who enter kindergarten school-ready on a multidimensional assessment will increase from 21% on August 1, 2019 to 65% by August 1, 2024
The percentage of graduates who are successfully persisting in the second year of their post-secondary program will increase from W% on X to Y% by Z
The percentage of academically vulnerable students in kindergarten through 2nd grade who are reading/writing on or above grade level on the district’s summative assessment will increase from W% on X to Y% by Z
The percentage of students at underperforming schools who demonstrate proficiency in collaboration, communication, and problem solving will increase from W% on X to Y% by Z
The percentage of males of color who graduate with an associate’s degree will increase from W% on X to Y% by Z
The community will also have other things it values beyond the vision. These other items relate to what the adults are doing to cause the Goals to happen -- they are the inputs, not the outcomes. They are about the means, not the ends. We refer to the written version of these values as Guardrails. Ideally a school board will adopt one to five such overarching statements (we generally recommend three). Guardrails describe how the school system will behave as it seeks to accomplish the Goals. Examples of Guardrails include:
The Superintendent will not allow an inequitable distribution of educator talent
The Superintendent will not propose major decisions to the Board without first having engaged students, parents, community, and staff
The Superintendent will not allow underperforming campuses to have principals or teachers who rank in the bottom two quartiles of principal or teacher district-wide performance
The Superintendent will not allow the inequitable treatment of students
The Superintendent will not make instructional materials selections without input from parents and educators
The more clearly and finitely defined the school board’s adopted Goals and Guardrails are, the easier it is for the school board to ensure alignment between not only the school board’s sayings and doings, but also the superintendent’s sayings and doings. This is what we mean by creating the conditions for improving student outcomes.
Monitor Progress
Once the school board has clarified what the priorities are -- Goals and Guardrails -- the superintendent determines how best to implement them. From that point on, the work of the school board shifts to monitoring progress to ensure that reality increasingly matches the Goals and Guardrails.
Goals and Guardrails, however, often reference performance data that only gets updated once per year. So to monitor progress, more frequently available data is needed. For this, the board tasks the superintendent with developing a set of progress measures for each goal and guardrail. These Interim Goals and Interim Guardrails are based on interim data that is regularly updated and that allow the board to know whether or not the school system is getting closer to being able to accomplish the Goals and Guardrails throughout the year — rather than having to wait until the end of the school year and to find out if things are on track.
To be useful as progress measures, Interim Goals and Interim Guardrails must be SMART, must update multiple times during the school year, must be predictive of their respective Goals/Guardrails, and must be things that the administration can influence. The superintendent will select between one and three of these progress measures per Goal/Guardrail.
Having clarity about the community’s vision and values (Goals & Guardrails) and progress measures for tracking performance (Interim Goals & Interim Guardrails), the Board can now create a monitoring calendar and then begin receiving monitoring reports each month.
The school board behavior most strongly correlated with improvements in student outcomes is working collaboratively with the community and the superintendent to identify the vision and values and then adopting them into a set of Goals and Guardrails.
Once Goals, Guardrails, Interim Goals and Interim Guardrails have been adopted, the next behavior of school boards that most correlates with improvements in student outcomes is monitoring progress toward the board’s adopted Goals and Guardrails. School boards that truly desire to create the conditions for improvements in student outcomes invest at least 50% of their time each month into monitoring progress toward their Goals for student outcomes.
Align Resources
Once a school board has adopted Goals and Guardrails and has created a system for monitoring progress, the school board now has the tools for aligning any recommendations brought before the school board.
Should we adopt the budget proposed by the superintendent? Yes, if (and only if) the superintendent has demonstrated that it prioritizes accomplishment of the Goals and adherence to the Guardrails.
Should we proceed with placing an item on the ballot for consideration? Yes, if (and only if) the superintendent’s implementation plan clearly shows how use of those funds will help accomplish the Goals while honoring the Guardrails.
How will we evaluate the superintendent’s performance? That’s determined by the extent to which she made sufficient progress toward the Goals while operating within the Guardrails.
How should we invest our time during school board meetings? Focus at least 50% of school board time each month on monitoring progress toward the goals, and the rest of the time either monitoring guardrails or attending to statutorily required duties.
While the school board exists to represent the vision and values of the community, the job of the superintendent is to implement the vision and values of the community as described to them by the school board via the Goals and Guardrails. This arrangement creates clarity for the board regarding how to monitor progress and it creates freedom for the superintendent to innovate and take risks knowing that the board has pre-agreed to support whichever path she leads the school system so long as she can demonstrate that it prioritizes making progress toward the Goals/vision while honoring the Guardrails/values.
Communicate Results
Because the school board represents the vision and values of the community, it’s responsible for reporting back to the community on a regular basis. The community should not be expected to know everything about effective governance. Instead, the board should plan to convey to the community at least twice per year the basics of goals and guardrails, the why behind them, and progress regarding these priorities.
