Question #41 – Does Your Board Respond to District Monitoring?

Rick Maloney

(49 Questions to Ask Your Board)

There are three questions we always want to be able to answer, and all three start with the same phrase:

  1. How are we doing compared to the standard?
  2. How are we doing compared to ourselves?
  3. How are we doing compared to others?

― Katherine Gemberling1

This advice from The Key Work of School Boards challenges a board when monitoring district performance to carefully consider its response, including what to do about the monitoring.

Scenario: At the school board conference, a vendor was selling ties and buttons. Two particular buttons stood out. One said, “It’s the board’s fault!” and was selling at a brisk pace. An even bigger seller, the other button, intended for sale to board members, said “It’s the superintendent’s fault!”

These buttons were a big hit, because of the humorous way they illustrated our tendency to blame others rather than actually do something to solve problems. Superintendents, in unguarded moments, may blurt out their frustration with their boards. Board members also tend to blame the superintendent when things go wrong. But the blame game is only a temporary dodge. It doesn’t work over time. Blame is often a response indulged in by someone who doesn’t want to take responsibility for solving problems.

Scenario: The new chief executive was taking over from a predecessor who had been sacked. While cleaning out his office, the outgoing executive had put an envelope in the drawer with a note that said “To my successor: I left some advice in 3 sealed envelopes. Open them one at a time whenever you are in a tight spot.” At the end of the first week a serious screw-up occurred, and the new CEO opened envelope #1. It said, “Blame your predecessor.” She tried the advice and was surprised to find it deflected her boss’s ire. It worked! A couple of months later, another crisis erupted, and she opened envelope #2. It said, “Blame your subordinates.” Again, she followed the advice, and it worked! Another month later a major problem emerged that seemed to have no solution. She decided to open the final envelope. It said, “Prepare three envelopes!”

The three envelopes story has a lesson for boards and superintendents. While you may temporarily get by with blaming others for your difficulties, sooner or later you are going to have to take full responsibility for what you can control (failures as well as successes) and must exercise leadership to come up with real solutions to real problems.

Regardless of how positive the board-superintendent relationship may be, it is critical for the board to view data with a discerning eye and (like an umpire) to “Call ‘em the way I see ‘em!” Then the board should answer the question, “So what?”

We have to decide what we think about the monitoring. But in making those judgments we should exercise self-discipline, limiting ourselves to answering the question “How did our district do in comparison to our previously stated expectations for successful performance?” We must suppress the urge to say “Here’s how I would prefer that the superintendent did things…”

Like any good leader, the superintendent prefers to deliver an upbeat, positive message whenever possible…after all, that is just good public relations. School board members, more than anyone else, need to be aware of how educators will purposely, or sometimes unknowingly but with good intention, report statistical and financial information so that it appears in the most favorable light. A case in point is the calculation of the high school dropout rate. Generally speaking, the public intuitively believes the dropout rate (or graduation rate, as it is usually reported) ought to be a simple calculation involving how many students entered high school in the 9th grade and how many actually graduated 4 years later. On the surface, it’s a simple x-y, percentage calculation. Educators point out such a calculation fails to account for students who transfer to other schools in or out of state, therefore ignoring those who graduate somewhere else. It also excludes those who graduate, but take more than 4 years to graduate, those whose parents register them as homeschoolers, those who transfer to the community college system while in high school status, and even those who are deceased. Board members need to know in detail what the basis is for statistical data being reported and insist on numbers the board considers to be “fair”.

The board should hold the superintendent accountable for district results. Done well, superintendent evaluation uses data compared with expectations that have already been written. A strong link is thereby established between expectations contained in district goals and policy and superintendent evaluation. It discusses both data and the board’s conclusions about the data in a public setting, so that the community can see the accountability process in action.

The effective board responds to district performance monitoring, first deciding whether the district has succeeded in making reasonable progress, then whether the district remains compliant with law, regulations and policy guidance. When judging district performance, it avoids second-guessing based on previously unknown criteria, or criteria it has not previously agreed on and made public. The board then decides what that means for the district, and its intentions going into the future. The board assigns accountability for district performance to the superintendent in her own evaluation as chief executive, because she has been assigned responsibility for everything the district does or fails to do, and has been delegated authority to lead the district by making changes as needed. Finally, the board determines its own accountability in its governance role and how to improve its own job of assuring organizational performance through updated policy guidance or other strategic-level decisions.

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.

ALSO: Please feel free to register in order to receive future posts like this one as soon as they are published.

Excerpt from:

Additional References:

Next: Question #42 Does Your Board Hold Itself Accountable?