How to Build a More Effective School Board
AJ Crabill has been training school board members since 2016 with the Texas
Education Agency and the Council of the Great City Schools. He’s now out with
a new book, Great on Their Behalf: Why School Boards Fail, How Yours Can
Become Effective. Winner of the Education Commission of the States’ James
Bryant Conant Award, AJ has been widely recognized for his work helping boards
focus on student learning. With school boards much in the news, it seemed a
good time to chat with AJ about the state of school boards, the challenges
they encounter, and how they can succeed.
Rick: You’ve got a new book out, titled Great on Their Behalf: Why School
Boards Fail, How Yours Can Become Effective. Can you tell me a little about
it?
AJ: My intention is to accelerate the transition of our nation’s school boards
from being focused on adult inputs to student outcomes. At large, board
members are well-intentioned and believe in what’s possible for our students.
But school board members have been misled and mis-trained into focusing on
what works for adults rather than whether students’ knowledge and competence
is actually improving.
Rick: What prompted you to write this volume?
AJ: When I was first elected to my school board, I had no idea what I was
doing. A lot of school board members are like me—we mean well but aren’t clear
about how to translate that intention into impact. So we sit in board meetings
month after month frustrated. I wish someone had handed me a framework for
school board improvement based on our best evidence about which behaviors in
the boardroom are most likely to create the context for improvements in
student outcomes.
Rick: Is this burst of attention as unusual as it seems?
AJ: No. It’s common that when parents get frustrated, they get involved. It’s
one of the great checks and balances built into the system. What’s unusual is
the national scale that was brought about by the pandemic.
Rick: There’s been a lot of talk about problematic board behaviors. How do you
think about that?
AJ: You have to distinguish between professional behavior and effective
behavior. Professional behavior simply means that the school board is behaving
in a manner that allows it to efficiently conduct business. Effective behavior
means that the school board is behaving in a manner that is focused on
improving student outcomes. It is incredibly common for school boards to
conduct themselves in a professionally, ineffective manner. So while many
people are talking about behaviors that seem unprofessional, my focus is on
helping school boards be effective. For the work I do, when school boards are
intensely focused on improving student outcomes, other behaviors are
secondary. I’m suspicious of any actions that decrease role clarity for school
boards. So if a board is being politicized, political parties tend to be
heavily focused on adult inputs: who gets which jobs or contracts and whether
a book or building name is politically correct. It’s not that these adult
inputs are unimportant, but if these are the only things that receive focus,
student outcomes no longer do.
Rick: What are one or two eye-opening examples of what an ineffective or
unprofessional board looks like?
AJ: Since the function of a school board is to create the conditions for
improved student outcomes by representing the vision and values of the
community, all nonaligned tasks are by definition dysfunctional. Conversations
on the COVID shutdowns were the most common and appalling dysfunction I’ve
observed. Currently, I’m seeing many boards pursue one of two inappropriate
extremes. The unprofessional school boards that are so intimidated by
community voices that they allow school board meetings to devolve into chaos,
failing to attend to the business of educating children. And the ineffective
school boards that are so frustrated by community voices that they tune them
out and make decisions without listening to the community. Both of these
adaptations are destructive.
AJ: Five continuous improvement behaviors done over and over. First, adopt a
mindset focused on improving student outcomes by changing adult
behaviors—starting with your own. Second, clarify the priorities by adopting
goals about student outcomes, describing what students should know or be able
to do. Third, spend 50 percent of board meetings each month monitoring those
goals to see whether students are making progress. Fourth, aggressively align
the district’s resources to those goals. And, fifth, communicate the results
regarding the goals—the good, the bad, the ugly—to the community at regular,
predefined intervals.
Rick: What one or two pieces of advice do you have for those who’d like to
help boards lead more effectively?
AJ: Across the nation, my findings are that the average school board is
spending between 0 percent and 5 percent of its time each month actually
focused on monitoring whether student outcomes are improving, and for most
school boards, that’s really 0 percent. Sure, they conduct much of the
business of a school system, but do they have goals? Are those goals focused
on student outcomes? Are they actually monitoring student performance each
month to see if students are gaining or losing ground relative to the goals?
When you watch and code hundreds of school board meetings for this specific
behavior, it’s rare to find the school board that’s spending more than 1
percent of its time per month behaving this way. Adopting a student-outcomes
focus sounds nice, but it’s so rare because basically everything else in the
system works against a school board achieving and maintaining that focus. Two
strategies that seem to help school boards move from 0 percent to at least 50
percent focused on student outcomes are to get a school board coach that is
certified in a student-outcomes-focused approach and then track the percentage
of minutes (anyone can do this) each month that the school board invests in
monitoring progress toward its student-outcome goals.
