SURVEY: EDUCATION IN 2050
We are working on a new project about education in 2050. This newsletter reaches thousands of education leaders nationwide; we hope to harvest the collective wisdom of this readership. Please consider taking about 10 minutes to complete this survey.
QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES
Question: Our superintendent search has a leak. What do we do? -- Board Member in Texas
TESBM: Probably less than you think.
First, on a long enough timeline, leaks are inevitable. Between spouses, administrative staff, media outlets, candidates talking more than they should, and slightly-too-loud conversations in public places, leaks are as likely to be unintentional as intentional. The only thing to do in these cases is notify the board of the leak, tighten up your timeline, tighten up your communication channels, and pray that no top tier candidate was scared off.
Second, ask yourself: is the board unified on what you're looking for? Because when the board is divided on direction, leaks are how factions fight their battles. When the board is unified, leaks become far less relevant.
What not to do? Go on a witch hunt. You’re almost never going to be able to prove who leaked and you’ll burn through whatever goodwill you have while failing to prove anything.
Question: Voter turnout in our board elections is consistently low. We say we want more community engagement, but when election time comes, very few people participate. What can boards realistically do to increase participation in school board elections? -- Board Member in Oregon
TESBM: There’s an assumption in this question that I don’t buy. The assumption is that if people cared more, they’d vote. I think we pretend this is the case so that we don’t have to confront a less comfortable reality: why would they bother?
Nationwide, it’s not uncommon for a third of school board seats to go uncontested. When people do run, student outcomes often are a distant afterthought — nudged out by things like coach drama, budget drama, and facilities drama. If student outcomes aren’t going to be at the center of the conversation, why do school board elections really matter? I’m not stating this as an opinion that people shouldn’t vote. I’m simply clarifying what I think we’re actually up against in trying to get people to vote.
So what can we do about this? Some ideas:
Clarity of Purpose: When boards are unclear about what they exist to do, elections feel symbolic rather than consequential. If the public cannot easily describe the board’s role in improving student outcomes, voting feels optional. Clear Goals that describe what students should know and be able to do make elections more meaningful because they clarify what is at stake.
Perception of Impact: Participation increases when people believe the board actually influences outcomes. If board meetings focus primarily on managerial details, elections feel disconnected from student success. When boards are disciplined about governing for results, the public more readily sees the connection between who serves and how the system performs.
Community Trust: Low participation is often less about apathy and more about distance. When communities feel decisions are predictable, transparent, and anchored in student outcomes rather than personalities, trust builds over time. Trust doesn’t guarantee turnout, but distrust almost guarantees disengagement.
Accessibility: Practical barriers matter. Election timing, communication about deadlines, and clarity about candidate roles influence who participates. While boards don’t control all election mechanics, they can ensure information about the role and its responsibilities is simple and widely available. There appears to be a benefit to having school board elections on the same night as other major elections.
All that said, we should be cautious about centering ourselves in this conversation. High turnout is not the ultimate goal. Improving student outcomes is. The most reliable way to increase meaningful participation in elections is to govern in a way that makes the role matter.
Question: Our district uses multiple assessments throughout the year, and there’s disagreement about whether we have too many, too few, or the wrong mix. Some believe we’re over-testing students. Others argue we don’t have enough data to improve instruction. What role should governance play in creating a balanced assessment system? -- Board Member in Kansas
TESBM: The over-testing/under-testing debate is a great operational question but only in rare circumstances is it a useful governance one. Boards definitely have a role to play in this conversation, just not the one most people think.
First, what do your Goals require you to know? If your board hasn't adopted clear student outcome Goals, you don't have a north star for what data you actually need. Without this, it’s impossible to know whether assessment is valuable to the board or not.
Second, are you getting the information you need to monitor those Goals effectively? Not random test data — monitoring data. There's a difference. Random acts of data might tell you about student performance at a point in time. Monitoring data tells you whether the system is on track to meet the board's adopted Goals. This is what the board should be demanding.
Third, and this is often a critical miss, what happens with the data? An assessment system is only as good as the board's willingness to act on what it reveals. If you get a monitoring report that shows students aren't on track and your response is "thank you for the report," you don't have an assessment problem. You have a governance problem.
The reality is that it’s not unusual for a school system to begin doing this work and the superintendent find themselves needing to perform an assessment audit because the work revealed that there was significant non-alignment regarding one of the previous three issues. But that is staff work to do and those are staff corrections to make because of the expertise it requires to get it right.
Regarding the aforementioned rare circumstance: if a community’s highest priority value concerns testing quantity/frequency, that concern could be translated into Guardrails about instructional time, student experience, or assessment load. This keeps the board focused on values and Guardrails rather than operational design. Realistically though, the vast majority of assessment that students experience comes from individual school and teacher decisions. This is where the real work of an assessment audit is valuable: in the classroom and almost never in the board room.
Teachers need coaches to be their best. Principals need coaches to be their best. Superintendents need coaches to be their best. School boards need coaches to be their best. If your school board wants support to be great on behalf of the students you serve, click below for a free consultation.
INTERESTING READS & LISTENS
Questions frequently come up about free speech and school boards. Here’s one set of ideas.
A discussion about the crucial role school board members play in creating conditions for improving student outcomes
Castor’s report on the Mississippi Marathon
An interesting national survey of school board members.
BOARD MEETING ANALYSIS
A subscriber asked us to watch the March meeting of a school board in Illinois. Here are the highlights from the Regular Board Meeting:
Total Minutes: 40mins
Minutes Focused on Student Outcomes: 0mins
Key Topics: Superintendent updates, Staffing cuts, Team recognitions, Union contract issues
What Coach Celebrates:
The board efficiently handled required procedural and statutory items (financials, consent agenda).
Public comment allowed for multiple stakeholder perspectives, including students and staff, to be heard.
Meeting length was concise, suggesting disciplined pacing of agenda items.
What Coach Recommends:
No time was invested in monitoring progress toward student outcome Goals (0% vs. 50% target). This is the highest-leverage shift available.
Reallocate time from acknowledgements and public comment to structured Goal monitoring conversations grounded in student outcome data.
Develop and follow a monitoring calendar to ensure monthly review of progress measures aligned to board-adopted Goals.
Shift questioning from procedural (“any questions?”) to strategic, measure-focused, results-oriented questions tied to student performance data.
UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES
Effective Board Member Requests/Concerns
Board members, as representatives of the vision and values of the community, are going to have questions, concerns, and requests related to things they hear from the community. What are the best ways to manage all this in a manner that doesn’t dilute the board’s focuse on student outcomes? Let’s talk about it!
Date/Time: 11am central on Friday, June 12, 2026
Did you miss last month's 30-minute free webinar? Email Greg for a make-up session on any of our growing list of topics, including governance policy, delegation policy, effective budgeting, superintendent evaluation, professional services management, strategic planning, consent agendas, and more.
BONUS MATERIALS
For paid subscribers, here are links to additional resources (to gain access to the links below, please consider subscribing):
Additional details about the analyzed meeting:
Board Meeting Video
Meeting Agenda
Strategic Plan
Time Use Analysis
Guidance documents related to this issue:
Effective Conflict Navigation
Effective Goal and Guardrail Setting
Question we can answer? Submit it to our coaches
Want a school board meeting analyzed? Send us the video.
Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe to the newsletter.
Enjoying? Forward this to regional / state / national colleagues