Boards can influence student achievement

When searching for reasons for student underachievement, the school board of trustees is not usually high on the list. However, a visiting education specialist from the US says that needs to change.

Mary Delagardelle, deputy executive director of the Iowa Association of School Boards, says it’s not about blaming school boards, just acknowledging that good school governance has a big part to play in student achievement.

Ms Delagardelle was the keynote speaker at the NZ School Trustees Conference, held early in July.

Her organisation has carried out extensive research into the role school boards play in student learning.

The study looked at schools in Iowa and other states (that have a similar school governance system to NZ’s), and compared school boards in high achieving schools with those in low achieving schools.

“We found that while lower achieving schools may have had well-intentioned boards with positive relationships, what was missing was the willingness to take on a leadership role, leadership proved to be one of the major missing ingredients.

“Board members aren’t always ready to act as leaders, they sometimes just want to defer to the school principal, and when that happens you miss that critical governance leadership.”

She admits leadership is a fairly esoteric concept but says clear and strong leadership tended to be lacking in boards at low achieving schools, and that it could be rectified.

The 10-year on-going research project has identified five key things boards can do to improve student achievement which will be discussed at the conference.

“We found that when boards were able to change it had a positive impact on the school culture, the school’s belief in itself and student’s learning. The evidence showed that when boards lead in particular ways it can very significantly impact in student achievement.”

In short, Ms Delagardelle says that when it comes to student’s doing well, boards matter.