(49 Questions to Ask Your Board)
“First, nonnegotiable district goals should be established for student achievement and for effective instruction, which is a necessary condition for student achievement. These goals should be monitored and used as the basis for immediate corrective action, thus moving districts toward the ideal of high-reliability organizations. Second, the nonnegotiable goals for achievement and instruction should be established through a collaborative goal-setting process that involves key stakeholders. The board should be fully behind the nonnegotiable goals, and all available resources in the district should be used to support these nonnegotiable goals.”
― Tim Waters and Robert Marzano1
Conducting a meta-analysis of hundreds of research studies into district-level leadership, Waters and Marzano of the Mid-Continent Research and Education Laboratory found that district-level leadership matters with regard to goal-setting and student learning.
The above research findings, although initially envisioned as lessons about superintendent leadership, enable us to see the board’s role in district leadership as demanding that such non-negotiable goals be identified, and that the process by which they are developed is collaborative.
Scenario: Fulfilling the leadership role over its school system required that the Westfield board understand a multitude of subjects: financial structures, bargaining agreements, emerging pressures, industry direction, teacher preparation, parental and student wishes, and overall political direction (national, state and local) just to name a few. For the board, this went far beyond simply attending a monthly meeting or two. It needed to spend blocks of time studying (as a unit), reading, and attending workshops on specific topics. The more time the board (as a whole) devoted, the higher the resulting quality of the vision.
Waters and Marzano’s research findings advocate board alignment with non-negotiable goals for achievement and instruction. Van Clay and Soldwedel also address such alignment:
“[The] board can conceive of and drive a vision of systemic alignment for the entire school organization by doing the following: Demanding an overall strategic plan for the school organization – a plan informed by parent, student, community, and staff perspectives; Establishing goals or priorities that support each other rather than compete for time and resources; Ensuring that all board-authorized staff development and training are aligned with those goals and priorities; Pushing for outcomes-based goals, but only after needed process-based goals are firmly in place; Using data to measure whether significant changes have occurred and what the benefits are to children.“
― Paul Van Clay and Perry Soldwedel2
The effective board understands the importance of goal-setting. Goal-setting for the board begins, but does not end, with collaboration between board and superintendent in order to assure the board has the best, most up-to-date information with which to plan. Although it prudently leaves out many ultimately operational details to be filled in by professionals, the board directs and supervises the strategic planning process by demanding adoption of certain non-negotiable student achievement goals and identification of proven instructional strategies intended to achieve the community’s vision for students. In addition, the board demands that the superintendent and staff develop action steps that the district will use to achieve them. Because action steps form the strategy for achieving goals, and they are developed and maintained by the superintendent and staff, they are living documents, always current and relevant to the district’s work. Board goals should be enduring goals.
The effective board communicates the vision to stakeholders throughout the community, frequently referring to strategic goals in public. It incorporates systematic and public monitoring of progress toward the strategic goals as a major part of its annual plan for board work. It nurtures broad agreement on the strategic planning process and remains faithful to the strategic plan – year in and year out – never veering off on tangents in subsequent unaligned annual plans or accountability discussions.
The effective board then aligns district resources with those goals.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in these blog entries are informed by references cited herein, and the experiences of the author. Your comments are welcome additions to the conversation.
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Excerpt from:
- A Framework for School Governance (2018), Rick Maloney
Additional References:
- 1District Leadership That Works (2009), Robert Marzano and Tim Waters
- 2The School Board Fieldbook (2009), Mark Van Clay and Perry Soldwebel
Next: Question #15 – Do Your Goals Focus on Students?