Last fall, I wrote about closing a chapter. After nineteen years, I handed the DigCit baton to my KSB colleagues and said it was time to be present where I was most needed.
This is what I meant.
About twenty years ago I came across the Lighthouse Project research, which was sponsored by the Iowa Association of School Boards. Researchers tracked selected school boards for over a decade. In 2001, the initial results of the project showed us for the first time what actually distinguishes high-performing school boards from low-performing ones. What the researchers found wasn't about board member credentials or community resources. Instead the school boards in high-achieving districts exhibited distinct beliefs and behaviors. Later research showed that those beliefs and behaviors could be evaluated and replicated by other boards to help improve their districts’ achievement.
I admit that I became slightly obsessed with the Lighthouse Project research and all of the data and studies that came after it. This research isn’t secret, but it is hard to find (I’ve read lots of PhD dissertations over the past 20 years). Sadly lots of it is written in obscure academic language. But this research has been out there. Most districts have never been given the tools to act on it.
Here's what I watched from my front-row seat as a school lawyer, for all those years:
Boards that smiled and nodded in evaluation meetings and then didn't renew a superintendent's contract eighteen months later over something never once raised in a formal conversation.
Good superintendents walking out blindsided.
Boards drifting into micromanagement so gradually nobody could name the moment it started.
Principals and teachers leaving, not because of salary, but because the governance environment was chaotic and everyone knew it.
All of it in districts that were, on paper, doing everything right.
Meanwhile, we preached continuous improvement to teachers constantly. Rubrics. Coaching. Measurement. And then we forced boards to operate with no structured process for holding themselves to any standard at all.
To be honest, I got tired of watching it.
The tools that existed for board self-evaluation were designed by academics or built for training contexts that assumed that the board could spend hours, hire a facilitator and have patience most boards just don't have. Board members are farmers, business owners and community leaders with real jobs, additional commitments, kids and limited time. Many have never been in a professional setting where they gave or received formal performance evaluations to a CEO-type. So the research sat on a shelf.
Two years ago we started building our evaluation suite. Last year we released the superintendent evaluation platform. Then a principal evaluation platform. And now the piece I most wanted to build: a board self-evaluation platform. Private. Anonymous. Practical. A comment bank that helps board members find the words for what's actually happening. And when the results come in, a curated list of resources — books, podcasts, blogs, vetted consultants — pointed directly at the board's lowest-scoring area. We screened every one of them. We have no financial interest in any of them. They're just the best things we found to help boards actually improve, not just measure.
Closing the DigCit chapter wasn't giving something up. It was making room for this. It was making room for the chance to help kids the way the Lighthouse Project research pointed to all along: by fixing the governance above the people who serve them.
The KSB Leadership Evaluation Suite — superintendent, principal and board self-evaluation — is available now. All three modules, $1,500 per year.
It only took me twenty years to get here. I'm glad I finally did.
— Karen
*Schedule a demo at https://www.ksbschoollaw.com/evaluation-platform or email ksb@ksbschoollaw.com.*