Kathy Elliott spencer assistant superintendent

What role does a school board play in improving student achievement? Spencer school board members have been exploring the answers to that question as participants in Iowa's Lighthouse Study this school year. The Lighthouse Study is the research done in Iowa that defines what school boards do in districts that have increased student achievement. Provided below are two important things that the Spencer school board is doing to have a positive effect on student learning.

The Singular Power of One Goal: One important factor is having one specific, measurable goal for everyone in the system to work toward. Too many goals lead to confusion, overload, and the inability to achieve any of them. Having one singular goal allows everyone to know what the focus is, with a clear understanding whether or not they reached it.

In order to be successful, the goal needs to be a SMART goal: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-oriented, and Time-bound. Staff members need to know specifically what they need to do to reach the goal. They need to know what will be used to measure success. And they need to feel that it is something within their ability to accomplish, with clear results within a limited timeframe. Working on something as broad as "improving literacy," without some definition of what each person needs to do most likely will not lead to improvement in student learning. School boards can provide a focus on what is most important by setting one clearly defined goal and expecting everyone to work toward that goal.

Focusing Professional Development on the Goal: One of the biggest barriers to increasing student achievement is having too many initiatives going on at the same time. Another barrier to improving learning is not maintaining a focus on an initiative for long enough to make a difference. Teachers often are confused and frustrated by having too many initiatives to attend to and too little time to fully implement anything they've learned before the next initiative appears.

The result is poor implementation of potentially effective learning strategies. And because they aren't implemented frequently enough or well enough, promising initiatives are too often abandoned, making way for the next one rolling in the schoolhouse door.

The Lighthouse Study illustrates that school boards can have an impact on the implementation of professional development. The board can require a singular focus during professional development time that is directly tied to the one goal. The board must support professional development time by freeing staff up from competing initiatives and by providing adequate time for teachers to fully implement what they've learned.

Spencer's school board members have been deeply involved in conversations on how the system can maintain a singular focus during inservice times on a specific student goal. As the 2007-08 school year ends and we prepare for the 2008-09 year to begin, board members, administrators, and teachers are working together to focus professional development in a way that will make a difference for students.