Student Outcome Focused Governance - Still a Bad Idea

A busy week at JSCEE with yet another meeting - this time for the Board - on Wednesday, Nov. 13th at 4:30 pm. Subjects? Agenda

Work Session: Policy Governance 4:30 p.m.*
Work Session: Progress Monitoring Training 6:00 p.m.*

My very first question would be - who wrote these guidelines? Someone at Council of Great City Schools? They are aware that not all boards are elected and most operate within the challenges of their district.

These cover:

- Effective Goal Monitoring

Goal monitoring is a conversation between the board and superintendent that provides boards the opportunity to evaluate the alignment between the community’s vision for student outcomes (goals) and current student performance/growth (reality). While goals and reality may not match perfectly, it only becomes problematic when there is no evidence of student growth. And even if students aren’t yet growing and making progress, that’s only catastrophic if the superintendent doesn’t have sufficiently aggressive strategies in place for helping students make progress.

Well, if the superintendent already HAS "aggressive strategies in place" and yet students aren't making progress, what then?

- It should never suggest that goal monitoring reports be placed on the consent agenda, but guardrail monitoring reports may be on consent.

Because if they do that, nobody is really going to look at them. 

- By investing at least 50% of the board’s time each month into monitoring progress toward the vision, the board makes clear what the priorities of the entire organization are expected to be. This is a powerful tool for creating organizational alignment

50%!!! Raise your hand if you voted to have Board members do this. Or you were told this when current directors ran. 

- When the board receives monitoring reports from the superintendent, the report should be at a 6th grade level and include how the superintendent will respond to the data.

They say later on that the report should be written at a  6th grade level because "it should be easy for most parents to understand." Oh

The whole thing is head-shaking:

Effective Superintendent Participation
How superintendents show up in the monitoring conversation has a huge impact on the conversation’s effectiveness. A few guidelines include:

● Don’t Hide the Data: The student performance data being presented during the monitoring conversation should be easy for most parents to
understand. As such, monitoring reports should be only 1-5 pages at most, and should be written at no more than an 6th grade reading level.
● Don’t Sugar Coat the Data: The data is the data. Whatever it says is what it says -- good, bad, or ugly. Never suggest that the data is saying
anything other than what you believe it to be saying. If the school system is off track, say that; don’t talk around that. Sugarcoating loses trust.
● Align Monitoring with Managerial Action: Data in monitoring report should reflect what staff are looking at to gauge the district's effectiveness. There should be no need to create data for a monitoring session that isn't otherwise being considered by the superintendent and cabinet.*
● Be Prepared: Many superintendents rehearse for monitoring conversations by having their teams throw every conceivable question at them before the board meeting. This is a wise practice not only because it helps with the monitoring conversation but because it can help surface managerial issues and solutions that might not otherwise come up.
● Don’t Be Defensive: If the student performance data is disappointing, then it’s natural that board members would be disappointed. Unfortunately, not all of them will manage their disappointment in a mature, adult, and effective manner. Even if this happens, don’t get defensive.**

*You generally don't need to "create" data. It's a natural outgrowth of how policies play out. 

**Insert eye roll here

The Superintendent and staff:

Goal monitoring, like board governance in general, is not always intuitive. It is easy to inadvertently conduct monitoring in an ineffective manner. Here are a few guidelines to follow to increase the likelihood of effectiveness:

● Do Your Homework: Board members should arrive at board meetings having already read the monitoring report, having already shared technical and tactical questions with the superintendent, and having already come up with at least three or four SMART Questions each regarding the monitoring report (see During Goal Monitoring below). (We already know one board member who doesn't do this.)
● Understanding Reality: The desired result of monitoring is to understand the current reality for your students as compared to the vision you’ve adopted for them (goals). Whether you enjoy the current reality isn’t the point of monitoring; whether or not you fully know the current reality is.
● Keep the Conversation Going: If the superintendent presents a monitoring report that is missing the prerequisites (see Before Goal Monitoring above) or that fails to clarify for board members the extent to which reality matches the goals, consider tabling the conversation and giving the superintendent a chance to fix it and re-offer it at a subsequent meeting, instead of choosing not to accept it and ending the discussion. Why would you table the conversation which would inconvenience everyone?
● No Gotcha Governance: Adopt a monitoring calendar that shows which goals will be monitored during which months and that spans the full term of the goals -- for five year goals, the calendar should be five years. Then ensure board members adhere to the monitoring conversation rubric below.
● Don’t Offer Advice: Monitoring is never an opportunity for board members to provide advice to the superintendent regarding what should/shouldn’t be done about student outcomes. It’s also not about liking/not liking the superintendent’s strategies. So if Board members are getting feedback from constituents about superintendent actions, they should keep them to themselves?