Question #42 – Does Your Board Hold Itself Accountable?

Rick Maloney

(49 Questions to Ask Your Board)

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

― James Madison1

To be fully effective, the board controls itself as much as it controls the district. As trustee it stands in for the community, holding itself accountable so that it answers to the community for its own performance.

Self-assessment, too, can be part of a school board’s effort to hold itself accountable. In the 1980s, the Institute for Educational Leadership worked with several state school board associations to develop measures to let school boards evaluate their own performance. The assessment included a rating scale by which to examine such factors as procedures for oversight and review of policies and programs, indicators to assess progress toward objectives, indicators to look at student achievement, and whether ongoing expenditures are in line with the budget. There are, of course, other variables that figure into school board performance, but the point is that boards that do not regularly take their own temperature may not recognize when their work is subpar.

― Gene Maeroff2

Board feedback, rare enough when it occurs behind closed doors in an annual self-assessment, is rarer still as a public process occurring on a routine basis throughout the year. There are few examples of transparency greater than a board that is willing to receive its feedback in a public setting. An even more effective practice is to conduct its own self-assessment in public.

In the middle of the Civil War and against his advisors’ recommendations, Abraham Lincoln scheduled daily opportunities for receiving direct feedback from citizens who visited the White House to ask for something or give him a piece of their minds, often delivered in the form of harsh criticism and complaints. He philosophically referred to such occasions as his public opinion baths.3

An example of external board feedback comes from a public watchdog group in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Board Watch set up training for its members to observe meetings and give feedback to the school board.

A citizens’ group…created Board Watch as an arm to improve the city’s public schools by making the school board more accountable. Trained volunteers attended school board meetings and rated the board along five dimensions – focus and mission, transparency, conduct, role clarity, and competency…The group called on the board to raise the level of its conversation to focus on planning to meet achievement goals rather than devote so much discussion to routine administrative details. They also asked the board to designate specific time in its agenda for discussions of strategy and follow-up.

― Gene Maeroff2

Such feedback can easily be compared to Lincoln’s public opinion baths. While potentially uncomfortable at times for a board that must operate in public, the feedback mechanism described above can be an effective means of board accountability that contributes to board improvement.

The importance of this task. If it is to occur, board accountability should be intentional. If it fails to hold itself accountable, no one (a rare exception being the Board Watch group mentioned above) is likely to perform this essential accountability function. Because the whole community cannot attend board meetings and community members exercise a definitive and final voice only at election time, it is up to the board, as the community’s representative, to act in its place by self-governing, in essence supervising its own performance. This includes holding itself accountable for upholding community values such as responsible stewardship of public resources, transparency in conducting public business, etc.

The effective board sets clear expectations for its own collective performance. It self-monitors based on those expectations. It responds to that monitoring by affirming successful areas and taking corrective action as well as revising/updating its expectations where appropriate.

Board Accountability) consists of 3 elements: Setting Expectations for Board Performance; Monitoring Board Performance; and Responding to Board Monitoring.

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:

References:

Next: Question #43 Does Your Board Set Criteria for Measuring Board Success?