(49 Questions to Ask Your Board)
A school board, being composed of persons, may find self-assessment distasteful. Implicit in the process, after all, is the assumption that its members will admit to some failures. They must be ready to see themselves as lacking in some areas. But board members, like most people, may get defensive when asked to account for their shortcomings. It is easier for boards to critique the performance of their main employee, the superintendent.
― Gene Maeroff1
The board’s initial impulse when responding to monitoring data may be silence, or even avoidance. But what’s good for the goose (the superintendent being subjected to board evaluation) is good for the gander (the board subjecting itself to self-assessment). If conducted well, superintendent evaluation is an organizationally healthy process. The same is true of board self-assessment when responding to monitoring.
The following incident shows the value of the board responding to monitoring:
Scenario: At a board retreat, after the Upper Platte School Board had finished evaluating the superintendent, board members got into a loud argument when they turned to a review of their own board performance. A couple of members had violated the open public meetings act, and one member had spent an excessive amount of money on travel for a national conference. After considerable discussion and heated recriminations, they finally agreed on a way to resolve similar such issues in the future and ended up with a sense of renewal. They felt that they were steering the board back to the purpose for which the public had “hired” them in the first place. At the very next meeting, they adopted revisions of policies intended to monitor and keep in check those board member behaviors that had initiated the conversation.
This board’s self-assessment didn’t stop with pointing out flaws. In this instance, at least, it led to actual improvements.
By judging its own performance in a self-assessment process, the board compares observed behaviors with criteria previously adopted by the board that describes effective board behavior. A connection is established between district goals and board self-assessment, so that going through the process is seen, by the board itself and by those who are watching the board in action, as a healthy way to improve the board’s performance, and that of the district, toward positive student outcomes.
The effective board responds to self-monitoring by judging whether the board is in reasonable compliance with its expectations for effective board performance. The board decides on the meaning of those findings, and signals its clear intentions for the future, including policy revisions, any need for professional development, and making an appropriate commitment to improvement. The board considers formative self-assessment as a growth opportunity and adjusts its policy language as needed to serve as a guide for the future.
NOTE: Please feel free to comment. 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 (2017), Rick Maloney
Additional References:
- 1School Boards in America: A Flawed Exercise in Democracy (2010) Gene Maeroff
Next: Question #46 – Does Your Board Hold Its Members Accountable?