Is your school board in disarray? Tensions boiling over? Factions forming? Superintendent ready to jump ship? School boards across the country face unique sets of challenges daily. But one policy-based model known as Coherent Governance® maps out what its founder believes to be, "... the most 'user-friendly' system in the world for effective board governance."
Discover the power of Coherent Governance® in revolutionizing school board effectiveness in this enlightening conversation with guests Dr. John Steach from the Center for Educational Effectiveness (CEE) and Linda Dawson, founder of the Aspen Group and Coherent Governance®.
Also on this episode, CEE and the Aspen Group announce a new merger between the two companies as they combine to bring comprehensive support to school districts across the country.
Learn about this novel, yet universally accepted, approach to improving board performance, creating the foundations for trust, innovation and community involvement while curbing ego clashes among board members and paving the way to success for incoming superintendents.
Expect to gain a deeper understanding of how to navigate the complexities of board meetings and unravel the vital roles of board members and superintendents in shaping a conducive environment that puts student achievement at the forefront.
You can find out more about Coherent Governance® at aspengroup.org or through their books:
You can find out more about the Center for Educational Effectiveness (CEE) at effectiveness.org.
"Outliers in Education" is a project of CEE, The Center for Educational Effectiveness. Find out more at effectiveness.org.
Produced by Jamie Howell at Howell at the Moon Productions.
Is your school board in disarray? Tensions boiling over? Factions forming? Superintendent ready to jump ship? School boards across the country face unique sets of challenges daily. But one policy-based model known as Coherent Governance® maps out what its founder believes to be, "... the most 'user-friendly' system in the world for effective board governance."
Discover the power of Coherent Governance® in revolutionizing school board effectiveness in this enlightening conversation with guests Dr. John Steach from the Center for Educational Effectiveness (CEE) and Linda Dawson, founder of the Aspen Group and Coherent Governance®.
Also on this episode, CEE and the Aspen Group announce a new merger between the two companies as they combine to bring comprehensive support to school districts across the country.
Learn about this novel, yet universally accepted, approach to improving board performance, creating the foundations for trust, innovation and community involvement while curbing ego clashes among board members and paving the way to success for incoming superintendents.
Expect to gain a deeper understanding of how to navigate the complexities of board meetings and unravel the vital roles of board members and superintendents in shaping a conducive environment that puts student achievement at the forefront.
You can find out more about Coherent Governance® at aspengroup.org or through their books:
You can find out more about the Center for Educational Effectiveness (CEE) at effectiveness.org.
"Outliers in Education" is a project of CEE, The Center for Educational Effectiveness. Find out more at effectiveness.org.
Produced by Jamie Howell at Howell at the Moon Productions.
Outliers in Education is brought to you by CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness. Better data, better decisions, better schools. To find out more, visit effectivenessorg upbeat music playing.
Speaker 2:Virtually all educational leaders at some point have either served on or under a board of directors, and more likely both. Whether you're sitting at the board table or staring back at it. These things that happen in the boardrooms don't always seem to make the most sense, but like anything else, there are tricks to the trade. We'll get into some of those on this episode of Outliers in Education, upbeat music playing.
Speaker 1:I think we really need to change how we look at what we do in schools. Everything that we do as educators, it just comes back to people. I love it, even when it's hard, especially when it's hard. Ultimately, I mean, this is about what's best for kids.
Speaker 2:Hi everybody, eric Price here with my good buddy and co-host, eric Bowles from the Center for Educational Effectiveness, welcoming you to another episode of Outliers in Education Bullsy. We've encountered boards at one level or another during our years in education and every superintendent in the country has a board to answer to, and in recent years things have gotten especially hot in some of those boardrooms. I know this is a softball question for you, but have you ever been in a board meeting that's gone sideways?
Speaker 3:More than one, my friend as it turns out and actually when we introduced Dr Stiech. We've had the pleasure of dissecting several of those together. Our careers actually intersected at one point. More recently, I can remember a board meeting where I actually bailed out a subordinate, at great risks to their credibility, hoping that the superintendent thought it might be the right thing, and was 45 minutes in front of the podium trying to clean up on aisle nine and couldn't feel my feet by the end.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I can relate to difficulties and things gone awry at school board meetings on a level I actually wish I couldn't. And when we think about it, boards are really up against a lot. These days, schools unfortunately become the focal point of the culture wars. We're dealing with unprecedented student mental health challenges post COVID. So there's just it's a real complex environment that boards are working in. We believe that, like most superintendents, most board members are absolutely well intentioned but oftentimes don't have a blueprint or framework to work from.
Speaker 2:Well, our guests today have more than a few ideas on that topic. Linda Dawson, founder of the Aspen Group, co-authored four books, most recently the Art of Governing Coherently, and is committed her career to coaching up boards and board members to higher levels of performance. With her is CEO John Steech from CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness. Bullsy does that sound familiar?
Speaker 3:I think it does. It's actually the place that.
Speaker 2:I work Sounds like your place. We've invited them here to talk about an approach to board work they're working on together these days, called Coherent Governance. Welcome to you both. Glad you're on the show, thank you. Thanks for having us. Well, let's just kind of start off today by simply figuring out what do you mean by coherent governance. Can you kind of give us a quick overview of that?
Speaker 4:In my career spanning now close to 30 years, but don't tell anybody. Most boards I work with are in were incoherent. They didn't know what their job was. They didn't know how to execute it. They worked as a collection of individuals, not one governing body, trying to give direction to the system, and so, coherently, we pulled together a system that's systematic and sustainable, that transcends what member of the board is at the table and even who the superintendent might be, so that we can focus on what they're all there for, and that's increased student achievement, which, in my career, is very often the last thing that's being considered.
Speaker 2:Boards just kind of get through some of those other particulars before they get to student achievement.
Speaker 4:You know it's their individual picadillos. If you have a history in theater arts, you want to come on and talk about the arts program. If you've got a gifted child, everything better be about the gifted program and funding, right, right. So those are just two small examples of how it just becomes chasing the latest whim.
Speaker 5:And I would add in that, having been both on the board for eight years and in the superintendent seat, when I reflect on what boards do they do? What they've typically always done or, as Linda said, what they want to do, and the only guidance they get is either from a state school directors association saying this is kind of what the board's lane is, or the superintendent trying to give them guidance on. This is what you should and shouldn't be involved in. But prior to my introduction to coherent governance, there really was no true framework I could find that defined what the true role of the board is in a school district.
Speaker 3:Well and really getting to that place. We know right now that superintendent turnover is at an all time high. One of the root causes of that, if not the root causes, oftentimes a breakdown in that board superintendent relationship. I know how that feels personally, being working just under the superintendency, having worked for six superintendent situations in 10 years and one district at one point. So does this provide any answers or anecdotes to the current state of affairs, folks, and could you tell us why and how?
Speaker 4:It does because it's all written down in very simple, clear policy here's what you have to do and here's what you cannot do as you manage the school system. So the superintendent isn't guessing, but let me say what he or she can or cannot do. But let me take another perspective, and John can respond to this as well. Very often we see board members come on and try to find a unit and the superintendent takes on the running of the board to himself or herself, rather than two distinct roles the board role and the superintendent role and so there's got to be that clarity of responsibility that transcends who's sitting at the table, and it's done through policy.
Speaker 5:And I would say that when I first became a superintendent, it was in a 5,000 student district and we didn't have the clear guardrails and goals that coherent governance can provide. And it provides guardrails in the way of operational expectations, whereas the board defines. This is what the superintendent will always do, this is what the superintendent will never do and this is what the board reserves authority over. And then, for the goals, they define the results of the outcomes that they want for students.
Speaker 5:When I went into the district, I was trying to figure out what seven different board members expected me to do in the midst of budget cutting, and I spent a whole year doing what everything that I thought was the best thing possible, really running myself ragged, trying to do everything I could in the midst of budget cuts and at the end of the year sat down to an evaluation to hear all of the individual board members tell me all their individual projects that didn't get accomplished for the year.
Speaker 5:It was very frustrating to me as a superintendent and not conducive to me wanting to stay in that type of a situation. I contrast that with when I went to Evergreen In my first year. We sat down with Aspen Group with Coherent Governance. The board defined those operational expectations of me as a superintendent. They defined the results that they wanted me to achieve with students. I knew very clearly this was my job. This is what the board's role was and how I needed to interact with the board and interface with the board to supply them the information they needed to be successful as a board and do their job.
Speaker 2:You were looking in that first position, John. It was almost like they gave you seven different maps that they wanted you to follow. That was an impossible position.
Speaker 5:That's exactly it. You think you're being successful and then they tell you yeah, you're successful, but here's all the things you didn't do. They never told me any of those things were high priorities. As I was working through that first year.
Speaker 4:It's really a matter. I think you'll agree, John, that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you had seven board members, to think that they even had a roadmap would be a big assumption to make. I really don't mean it disparagingly, because they walk into a system that is not. They're simply elected because they have a platform that somebody supports and they get on and then they figure out oh, maybe I can push and shove here and there and make the system responsive to me. Then the ego trip begins. John's exactly right. You set out these goals for student achievement and if you're achieving them and you're doing it within the expectations that the board has already stated, you should be getting an A-plus. You should be able to move on with the surety that you've met what they expect of you. It's forging that unit of governance instead of individuals with their own picadillos.
Speaker 5:The other thing that it says relative to turnover is it takes the personalities out of the equation.
Speaker 4:Hopefully.
Speaker 5:Because, independent of who's on the board, unless the board changes the policies, you're providing that clear direction to the superintendent. And when the superintendent comes in Because we know all too well there's a lot of turnover right now in superintendents I meet with superintendents on a regular basis that ask me if I have a job opening for them. They have basically had it with what's going on in society and the way that it's impacting our schools and when they leave for the next person to come in to clearly have those guardrails through, the expectations and those goals clearly defined for them to work towards student results, they know the roadmap to success in their first and second year as superintendent and it doesn't create whiplash throughout the entire organization of everybody trying to figure out what's the new person going to do when they come in and take control.
Speaker 3:Really along those lines, wondering if either or both of you can give us an example of where you've seen that maybe single issue voter running on a platform come in ego tripping board member and seeing how this policy driven process really has changed that atmosphere from concerning to now we're all working in harmony.
Speaker 4:Let me give you a quick example, and I think I shared this with John once. So, john, if you want to embellish on my history, feel free. But we worked in a school district with, I believe it was, nine board members. There's a problem right away. They ought to be like maxed out at five, in my opinion. I don't care how large or small. And secondly, a new board member came on, a former military guy, which is fine, but he had a very clear agenda on no sex being taught in schools. Sound familiar. So he was on less than a year and somehow got his hands on stationary for the school system and this is a large urban district in the east wrote a letter to all the principals in the system and said let's be clear, there will be no teaching of sex in the schools, there's abstinence only. If you have a question, contact me below. And he sent it out without ever bringing in a the administration or B as fellow board members.
Speaker 4:And all hell broke loose, as you can imagine. As you can imagine in a very politically charged environment. So the recourse on this was for them to go through. We have a policy on process for addressing board member violation. It just doesn't get swept under the rug or shame on you or you shouldn't have done it. They called an executive session and then a full meeting to censure this guy and said that's not how we play this game and if you want to help making these tough decisions and giving direction to the system A it doesn't go out on district letterhead. B you have to bring the rest of us along. And so he was very quickly put in his place. For how we work together as a board and how we give direction to the school system, that's a pretty egregious and you know in your face example, but unfortunately the level of seriousness not all that rare.
Speaker 5:And while it may not be tied to an individual, we recently had a conference with about a dozen school boards and superintendents from across the country where we looked at current issues, and those board members bring in those current issues.
Speaker 5:So we looked at AI and education, school safety SEL talked about those, but from the perspective of what's the board's role, and so, as we analyzed, I led a group that looked at AI and education and we looked at it. Does it really impact those operational expectations or those guardrails that you're setting up for the superintendent? And all these board members said no, even in the instructional environment, we don't think it really changes the rules to where we need to go, change the policy. The discussion they got into then is really it does have an implication on what are those 21st century skills our students need to have, and do we need to go back and reflect on our results and our outcomes that we expect for students and redefine the results that we're telling our superintendent that we expect from our students? And I think that's a healthy dialogue around to have around these single issues that typically are manifested in a single issue. Board member.
Speaker 2:So this is kind of getting at one of those pieces, I think, about some boards that we just don't know. There's some things that are just unsure, like these single issue folks. Can you kind of give us a picture of a board where you're creating a culture where there's safety, where you can make some risks and there's not that fear driven, and maybe some of those boards where they absolutely are fear driven?
Speaker 4:I don't know many boards that are fear driven, unless they're afraid of getting negative community reaction. No board likes that. We have a client in Colorado right now who had really serious gender identity issues, with lots of community lying actually by outside forces coming into play. And so what we have to do when we're working with these folks is they've got a retreat, they've got to pull away from the whole thing with the superintendent and say you know what is our role, how are we going to approach it? How do we involve the community and understanding what's going on here? So community engagement is really at the top of the list. How do we involve the people who own this school system in influencing outcomes that are best for kids?
Speaker 4:And very often the last thing we do is talk to the community or even talk to the kids. And yet these rabble rosers I can cite groups, but that probably not PC right now so they're trying to pull districts apart and get their own agenda running. And in John set out a good example. We sat down in brainstorming four topic areas and said this is a whole harmless environment. How do you as a board deal with these incredibly divisive things going on in our system in a productive way that's not going to screw things up. Did that answer your question?
Speaker 2:I think so. Yeah, we're going to take a short break to cogitate and listen to a short ad. Of course We'll be back with more right here. On outliers in education.
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Speaker 2:Okay, we're back and we're talking about coherent governance with Linda Dawson of the Aspen Group and CEO John Steech from the Center for Educational Effectiveness.
Speaker 3:John, you mentioned results policies. Could you briefly talk to us about what are those four policy areas that you operate from inside of coherent governance? Then how to part question, because I can only ask multiple part questions. Testing my memory Exactly how does this really create a system of safety and security where boards can even fail initially at their work?
Speaker 5:There's four different key policy elements. Most of the time when you hear school policy you think of the three-ring binders that are eight binders thick, that have literally hundreds of policies. Those are really the procedures that implement most of the state laws on how a district works. We're talking a whole higher level policy. The first level is your governance culture. Where the board agrees, this is how we're going to operate as a board, this is how we're going to treat each other, how we're going to run our meetings and the ethical level we're going to hold ourselves to. Then they set board superintendent relation policies that define how the board and the superintendent will work together and communicate together. The third set are those operational expectations which create that boundary or guardrails that really frees up the superintendent to run the district in the best way. They, as a highly skilled and educated practitioner in education, know they need to run the district. And the final policies are the results and often those center on academic outcomes, socialization and the ability to work in a working environment, those 21st century skills. You say SEL and that's typically elementary, but I think I've heard it on this podcast before when SEL grows up, it becomes 21st century skills. We're really trying to give students those skills they're going to need to be successful in life. And then some districts even have citizenship as one of their results outcomes. In the end, then the superintendent is responsible to come back to the board annually with all of those operational expectations and all of those results and provide data and evidence that they have run the district within the expectations of the board and that they've achieved the results that the board wants for their students.
Speaker 5:You talk about eliminating fear within the organization. Having lived in both environments, in one environment without a clear governance framework, as a superintendent you're always wondering, looking at the board, saying, can I go? And so you've got this hesitancy and the whole organization starts to fill that hesitancy of who's really in charge, who makes the rules and am I going to get in trouble for getting outside of a rule that I don't even know whether it exists or not, as opposed to with coherent governance. Everybody knows this is when I need to stop, and unless I need to stop, I know I can go, and that creates that environment for innovation where people know I have clear boundaries to what I can and can't do. Anything within those boundaries is fair game to innovate and try new things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's getting at the heart of that earlier question, because I have worked under superintendents that have worked under boards and when those superintendents have fear about a potential response from the board, like when we take a look at outlier all of our outlier work we look at stuff that you know is there trust within the layers? You know, do students trust the teachers? Do teachers trust the? You know the building admin, does building admin trust central admin? So now we're really talking about what's happening in that ceiling of central admin right, the soup and that board. So what would it take to make sure that you've got that trusting environment so that a superintendent could get cover to a building admin so they could do the right thing for kids?
Speaker 4:Well, it's all lined up to results and it all has to be compliant with their operational expectations and the wise superintendent or anybody in this if you believe in systemic authority and accountability, you have to drive it down to the school building and back up again, and we've in fact worked with school teachers on an Indian reservation in North Dakota where they took the operational expectations, John, and drove them to the classroom level and the kids identified what the expectations and the outcomes were.
Speaker 2:So is that what you mean by driving it down? Is it you're getting feedback?
Speaker 4:Driving it down and empowering them. So you're going to run the classroom. You can't violate any of the board's operational expectations. But in fact does the teacher have operational expectations and do I have to live up to them? So it's really a systemic and a systematic approach to good governance.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I think that's clear and I think that if I'm just going to ask a question from underneath like I'm looking up in the aquarium and I'm a principal looking up at this other stuff that happens above me, what would I sense with a healthy governance, above me with a soup and board, what would be those things that way yeah, this looks good and r-o-raggy not so good above you what would those things be?
Speaker 4:Board members who would try to grant themselves permission to misbehave. And so there's an annual work plan. What are we going to focus on at this meeting? Not just coming in and saying, okay, what's on the agenda tonight, folks, and it's planned out a year in advance so that work can be accomplished. If something pops up and you suspend your focus there better be a darn good reason, because you've got things to get done. And it also relies on the integrity of the people saying I appreciate the questions you're asking and concerns you have, but here's what we're focused on this evening. If we have other time, we can circle back to that or we can schedule it for future dates. But and then you know I remember, john, you've probably been there too we would get done with school board meetings and meet the next day as an administrative cabinet and say what happened last night? Do we ever make a decision? Who made the decision? Was there a motion and a second? Do we move forward now?
Speaker 2:You know, and and I think I said that after most board meetings, linda what I dreaded of that example was as a long time assistant superintendent.
Speaker 3:Oh no, I'm just going to have to clear everything that was on my calendar that was meaningful to address these things that came up last night.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's that old thing of reverse, reverse, reverse, reverse. And so you know you got to take people, that they're word and people have to be and they are in the system and power to speak up. We decided to follow this calendar Together. We set the agenda, we agreed to that ahead of time and this train is headed down the track and look what we're being able to accomplish for kids. Get kids at that board meeting showing what they know and are able to do, and you know it's amazing that with boards of education still so often it's not has nothing to do with kids and what's healthy and happy for them.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, I have a great story. When my daughter was seven, she was at a board meeting Can't remember why actually at this point but when we left she said how come those five old people up there talked about things that didn't have anything to do with school all night long? And I said you are asking my essential question, linda, which is really a segue into our next question. We understand there's 10 principles that boards need to follow behind coherent governance. Can you briefly talk about those Don't have to list them all out and then which one's really the paramount or superordinate responsibility of a board?
Speaker 5:So I'm going to use one of them as a bridge to get to the final one, and one of the key principles is the board needs to make the big decisions before they make the little ones, and when you make those big decisions around those operational expectations and the ultimate results that you want for kids, you're not getting involved in the day to day minutiae and you're not making the little, tiny decisions, which creates two things for the organization that creates consistency and coherency, and that's where staff are going to thrive, when they know what to expect on a regular basis, and things are aligned top to bottom, and you can't have either if the board is whipping back and forth and everybody in the organization is getting whiplash.
Speaker 5:Probably the biggest one, though, is the board's role in defining the desired results for the district students and requiring that achievement. Even before I got into coherent governance, when I was helping superintendents and boards, I had a slide that I'd show up of all the different kind of decisions that boards would make around scoreboards, transportation, naming schools, all the things that boards spend their time on. I said how many of you spend your time in this area? And everybody's like, oh yeah, those are all on our agenda all year long and I said, ok, student progress and student outcomes how often do you talk about those? Everybody wants? Maybe twice a year. Under this, that becomes the true focus of the board and all the rest of this should fall in line. If that's what you're truly focusing on and you have a clear expectation that your superintendent, your administration, all of your staff, they're providing quality evidence on the true measure of student performance and student outcomes within your school system.
Speaker 5:Only what gets measured gets done and if you're measuring how much it costs to put the scoreboard in the new stadium. That's going to get done.
Speaker 4:I sat through a three hour meeting on how thick the wrestling mats should be one time. But let me say this in defense of this system that's boomwacka. I mean we keep things in disarray because then we can control it right, somebody can control it. So in this, if you have a finite set of policies about operation and you have a finite set of what we want students to know and be able to do, we have to get these lay board members to know and understand what are the measures for gauging whether progress is being made or not. Most board members come on a board they don't know a quintile from a quartile to a standard deviation and they're not going to raise their hand and say can you explain that to me? I mean there is a certain level of ego involved in people running for a board. So there's this intricacy of establishing what does this community want kids to know and be able to do and how are we going to know they're making reasonable progress in that achievement? So it's a network of communication and education.
Speaker 2:Okay, Linda. So you've mentioned this a couple of times. There's this merger word. Can you tell me about what's happening with the CEE and the Aspen Group?
Speaker 4:Sure, Okay, as I said, we've been doing this for many years and wrote the books about what we're doing and why, but there's just so much gas in the tank, you know, and my business partner has decided to retire as of December 31st and I will say honestly, for five years we've looked for the right person to partner with to keep the momentum going. It would be heartbreaking to have spent years doing this and have it just fall off to the side. So we happen to think that our system, out of those available, has the greatest fidelity, the greatest assurity of doing what it says it can do, and we have great faith in the intellectual capacity, the humor, the knowledge, the experience of John and we're gradually getting to know you characters.
Speaker 5:I'm sorry.
Speaker 4:And we watched John work in Evergreen, of course, and that was a tough spot and he handled it with grace and has come out on the other end like the Phoenix here, and so we think that working with John to bridge these two companies and forge it into a system of excellence is doable.
Speaker 2:John, what's your perspective there?
Speaker 5:When I was in Evergreen as a superintendent, we were implementing coherent governance and I was trying to create the monitoring reports for the operational expectations, the results, and trying to really build it from scratch because there wasn't.
Speaker 5:Something was out there.
Speaker 5:When I got to CEE, we were able to connect with a couple of districts who had just done strategic plans, that were trying to figure out how are we going to monitor the strategic plan.
Speaker 5:So we got into first the dashboarding business, then strategic plan facilitation and in the back of my mind I just kept thinking and I kept reaching out to Randy and Linda saying I see synergy between us because this really can function properly if we have a board that understands their role and is true governing coherently through policy and I've always been looking for that connection and then, with them making this decision that it's time to turn over the reins.
Speaker 5:I thought it was a natural fit because if we can help school boards understand their role, which is in the outcomes, leaving the strategy to the superintendent then the way we've been facilitating strategic planning, the dashboarding, the way we are able to pull data together, both on the academic and the culture climate and the SELs aspects, being able to pull that in and show it in ways that the layman can understand, gives the board something, gives the community something, and that we can better support those districts that we're already helping from top to bottom. If you get one thing out of misalignment on the whole system, you're getting back into that organizational whiplash and people having all that uncertainty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in a layman's terms, john, as I'm hearing this, you've got the guardrails of governance, but you also need to have that data piece that tells you where you're going to be driving. Is that sort of something?
Speaker 5:Because one of the big concerns when we first implemented it, the criticism we got the board got was you're giving away the farm to the superintendent and that is the opposite of what's happening. The superintendent has far more accountability, because one of the things that we teach boards and superintendents is whoever has responsibility has accountability. So if the board's going to make the decision, they're not holding the superintendent accountable for the decision. It does happen, but they really need to hold themselves accountable. And if you really want to hold your superintendent accountable, you've got to delegate things and give them the responsibility to operate the district at the strategic level and focus. The true board's real work is focusing on results and if the board's truly doing that with fidelity and holding the superintendent and the administration accountable, that's when you've got a high-performing system.
Speaker 2:Well, Linda and John, so much here and now. What we're going to do is we're going to hand it over to the Sultan of Summarization. Bolsey, what do you have for all of this governance?
Speaker 3:thinking I'm going to dispense with my typical jokes about not summarizing. Well, not really. I guess that reference doesn't dispense with it at all.
Speaker 3:So moving into the summary. I think on a high level really, we just got a masterclass in what it looks like to have coherence from the boardroom to the classroom, which is many folks know is actually the work of Michael Fohlen, a Canadian researcher, real prevalent in education. So it's great to really hear about how all this works in practice from that theory, linda got started in the work, really noting that most boards were incoherent. By incoherent we mean a group of individuals functioning kind of individually all around their own interests. And what coherent boards do is they govern by policy. They need those guardrails so that they can collectively achieve the district's goals.
Speaker 3:Identifying how much this work of coherent governance and the Aspen Group really squares with our culture at CEE was something that stood out to me as well. And then really getting boards to focus on those critical outcomes for children which we would think intuitively is what boards would do in education. But clearly processes are needed in order for that to happen. One thing that really stood out to me that coherence creates a culture of innovation. When we're all clear about what it is we're supposed to do, it creates, gives us our best opportunity to innovate. And another thing loved Linda's example of the school district in North Dakota really identifying how to elevate student voices in this process. So again that boardroom to classroom notion squares a lot with episode one of season two, with Randy Russell and his students from Freeman really talking about the same thing. So another kind of opportunity for where that rubber meets the road. I just love the phrase granting permission to misbehave.
Speaker 3:It's not really a relevant part of the summary, but I wanted to throw it in there anyway, and I think we all know that there's probably never been a time where there's a bigger need or emphasis on transitioning toward coherent governance, whether we're talking school boards or a course with other boards and other governing bodies across our country as well. And what I love about coherent governance is it makes it all about the kids and their outcomes.
Speaker 4:Wilson.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. Thank you, Bulls, John and Linda. Anything else you'd like to touch on in that?
Speaker 5:I would just want to emphasize that these concepts aren't just exclusive to school boards. If you've got Congress, you know the the Congress.
Speaker 3:I wasn't going to go there, Linda.
Speaker 5:If you've got the board of one of your big four auto manufacturers, believe me, they're not concerned where the safety sign is hung in the work area. They're concerned with how many cars are getting produced, in the quality of those cars and our school, as much. As you know, during the 80s and 90s we said we need to be more like business in schools. I think the boards have to be the ones to start there and they need to help themselves accountable to saying we are really results oriented and that's what we need to focus on.
Speaker 2:Linda, where can we find your most recent book?
Speaker 4:Amazon Is it easiest.
Speaker 2:I think yeah, All right. Where does anybody find?
Speaker 4:anything Happy Christmas.
Speaker 2:I know Exactly, hey, thank you both for being on the show. A lot of fantastic things that you had to share with us, not only from the board and suit, but all of us who are a little bit further down the food chain and how that affects us, and that trust and that culture. So thank you both for being on the show Great.
Speaker 5:Thank you, eric, my pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having us and congratulations on your guys' merger. That's exciting.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it is, thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 3:And thanks to all of you who are listening in today. You can find us anywhere you listen to your favorite podcast or visit us online at effectivenessorg. Until next time. This has been Outliers in Education, and that's a wrap.
Speaker 1:If you'd like to find out how to gather the data you need to help drive positive change in your school or district, take a moment to visit CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness, at effectivenessorg. Better data, better decisions, better schools Effectivenessorg.