Introduction
Why is local control in our schools such a failure? This question has been echoed in many quarters among Americans concerned about school management. Due to lapses in school management, some people have strongly advocated for abolishment of school boards. This paper seeks to expose the reasons why school management has largely failed.
It will extensively look into the call to kill school boards and why pressures towards the same are increasing with passing time. To bid to establish if school boards should be abolished or not, the challenges faced by school boards will be dissected.
Decentralization as a public institutions management policy has served America and other countries well. One of the key strengths of a decentralization policy is that it makes decision making easier. Additionally, decentralization takes management closer to the people (Reeves 2003, p. 24).
The establishment of school boards resulted from a decentralization process (First1992, p. 31). However, as the case in this paper illustrates, it seems school boards are failing in their mandate. Many reformers agree that management decentralization in education has become increasingly difficult and caused many problems.
Although management of schools was vested with the boards with the intention of making the function independent, it appears the boards are easily manipulated by significant forces in the education sector. Such manipulation has made the board ineffective in the way they perform their roles and responsibilities.
School Boards
Before understanding why school boards should be abolished or not, it is critical to know what school boards are, their composition and roles in a school setting. School boards are composed of members who are the representatives of the community in the school.
Many believe that school boards have a considerable influence over the school decisions and that they provide a social and political connection in the way the school is run (Reeves 2003, p. 12). The important role the school boards play is to put into practice school management reforms.
School boards were instituted so as to help the government in implementing education related state legislative policy for the public schools (McAdams 2006, p. 7). They board members are the local administrators of the states public education system.
In the begins, public servants were elected to the school boards and they discharged the duties as school boards members while remaining in the initial employment; what they were doing before the appointment to the board.
The school boards are a legally recognized entity and school board members are guided by given legislation as they discharge their duties (McAdams 2006, p. 9). No individual board member has powers more than their role as a member of local school board.
School boards have a number of roles they perform in the local school system. They participate actively in curriculum development i.e. they contribute by evaluating and making suggestions for changes in the curriculum (Reeves 2003, p. 21).
They are charged with the responsibility of appointing key official members of the central office and they implement an annual school’s budget. It is the responsibility of the board to ensure that a quality environment that ensures educational excellence is entrenched.
Additionally, school boards initiate educational policies at the local levels. They do provide important administrative supervision as well as initiating educational policies and instituting programs. They take an essential role in establishing systems and processes to ensure school system’s outcome accountability.
They make important decisions concerning the district’s top management and key staff. School boards also provide leadership for the local school system; adopt a unifying vision and mission statements.
They seek for and balance the participation of the community members and they campaign for the educational needs of the children (Reeves 2003, p. 21).
It is the mandate of School boards to develop, implement and review policies. Some of the local policies established by school boards have to do with school employee welfare, associations and general conduct.
School boards promulgate local school policies but the policies have to be in tandem with national educational policies (Reeves 2003, p.19). They must recognize and conform to the legal authorization imposed by state and federal laws.
Their operations can at no particular juncture go outside laws and rules of the state authority. It is the responsibility of the board to review their own failure and success and communicate to the public concerning any decision made. They also make sure the public knows and understands their mission.
As leaders, school board members are expected to conform to the common moral values of society (McAdams 2006, p. 16). They also should promote accountability by reviewing their own failures and success and make sure that there is no abuse of power. The top management can take advantage of those below them and also use the office for the determination of special interest groups.
Some of the functions of the school bodies as enshrined in the State law include approval of the budgets prepared by the districts; they develop both short range and long range goals, define the educational objectives to guide operations, establishing performance indicators and participate in coming up with students’ assessment systems (McAdams 2006, p. 36).
They are also required to approve the curricular structure and standards for student achievement. Often, before establishing of goals or educational objectives to guide operations, the board members have to come up with a vision and mission.
Once the objectives to guide operations have been established, a closer scrutiny is given to the performance levels and key action plans to deal with current deficits are organized into an action plan (First1992, p. 52). The developed action plan acts as an implementation guide for the implementation of desired or designed policy.
Board policies cover a big part of operations in schools but sometimes the policies might be seen as vague and clashing by those responsible with the implementation of policies. There are a number of factors or challenges and directly or indirectly affect school boards performance.
Board members may not agree on the suitable means to realize key objectives. The board may be required by educators to be professional administrators and teachers to contribute meaningfully in matters of educational policies. Although it happens rarely but due to petty politics, some school boards are affected by high turn over.
Policy making is a very delicate process that often requires quick decisions. Interest groups make policy formulation a hard process. The influence of interest groups often lead to appointment of new board members who can not contribute significantly to the policy making process because of insufficient time to analyze the policy in order to achieve the objectives.
Despite being directly involved in policy making, their management role consists in supervision of school operations as an oversight body (First1992, p. 76). The boards are involved the implementation of standards as quality assurors. They assess progress towards the accomplishment of key objectives.
For them to do a good job, they need adequate information of knowledge into school related procedures and the organizational structure in place. It is imperative that board members have some knowledge of administrative supervision in order for them to be able to achieve their goals.
Critics of School Board Operations
Unfortunately, some school boards forget their mandate as an oversight body and engage in school micromanagement. Critics point out that school boards need focus on policy making and avoid micromanagement of the school system.
School boards should “emphasize their role as policy boards and not collective management committee and their aim should be to boost student academic progress” (Danzberger, 1992, p.18).
Many local boards take on the administrative duties and this is time consuming on them. These pseudo-judicial functions that they take on often compromise the policy making priorities of the board (Caughey & Caughey 1973, 9).
Some critics point out that often school boards foray into what they are not qualified to do. For example, it does not make sense to the critics, that school boards are involved in hearing of cases lodged against teachers, student or parents by whatsoever party (Caughey & Caughey 1973, 19).
Such issues need to be left to courts and other qualified parties should be involved and not the school board.
Another difficulty in differentiating policy making and administrative roles is the board’s responsibility in relation with school personnel (Danzberger, 1992, p. 25). School staff management should be left to school administration other than the policy makers.
Issues like recruitment, selection and maintaining of teachers when left to the board as the key player, often lead to clashing interests. Issue to do with conflict of interest with regard to school management among board members is a recurrent one. The most common kind of conflicts pits the board against the school staff or parents.
Inefficiency in school board is what kills or deteriorates standards in district schools (Danzberger, 1992, 9). Ideally, the school board should provide a uniting link between the different stakeholders in the education system.
They are relevant for public schools and should provide a forum through which ordinary citizens can air their views or grievances. As leaders, the board members have a responsibility of championing society towards a unified mission and vision.
One of their key concerns should consist in seeking for and balancing the participation and contribution of the members of the community towards development of local schools.
Further, their focus should be in campaigning on behalf of the local community to receive enough support for its educational needs from the government (Caughey & Caughey 1973, 5). With this leadership responsibility, the school boards should stress on the continuous improvement of its operations.
Critics argue that the school boards are not serving their purpose. As discussed, they ideally should be symbols of local control of public education. The key role or reason why the school boards exist is to ensure the education related interests of the community they represent are well articulated or catered for by education policy.
However, while some critics argue that the role of school boards has changed to that of micromanaging the operations of the school system and according to the whims and dictates of small interest groups, many still feel the school boards are important.
To demonstrate why many people want all school boards to be abolished, we will look into the case of western Pennsylvania where school boards are deemed to have failed terribly.
The Case of Western Pennsylvania
For a school to be successful, a sound curriculum, parents’ support and sufficient resources are important factors that have to be considered. A positive relationship between teachers, school boards and administrators should be balanced. If there is hostility among them, then the school won’t function well and the students will suffer.
A non-collective bargaining agreement may cause failure if the management coerced into putting someone without the right training, in the right place at the right time (Smoley1999, p. 1). When teacher recruitment and deployment is affected, schools are denied the professionals who would take learning and students’ performance to a higher ground.
Earliest school boards generally had one duty and that was to find teachers. Today the board members have numerous functions depending on the number of committees on which they serve.
The typical school boards have committees like “finance and budget, buildings and construction, policy, technology, negotiations and personnel” (McAdams 2006, p. 62).
Qualified board members should be elected but they are hard to find. Through research, it has been established that most of the candidates elected as school board members do not have any relevant skills or qualifications.
This kind of state of affairs is occasioned by a general the often low voter turn outs at school board elections. The constituting of an ineffective board makes students suffer a lot because the board is not helping them at all.
Bad school boards are in constant conflict with other stakeholders or within themselves (Danzberger, 1992, 26). Furthermore, bad school boards emphasize their role as a collective management committee than a policy body.
When they assume the administrative duties they cause conflicts between them and teacher which result in grand standing wastage of student or pupils’ time. Board related conflicts affect students adversely and is one of the major reasons why district schools often have lower test scores, fewer kids going to school and more dropouts (Danzberger, 1992, 17).
A research conducted by Iowa Association of School Boards (2000) confirms that school districts that have a high number of students who don’t perform well are led by school boards with members who are not skilled and qualified to lead a school to success.
They did a research and found out that members who came from successful and better performing districts knew and understood more about important factors like sound and quality curricula, parents’ support, sufficient resources, testing and using data to monitor students’ progress (Iowa Association of School Boards, 2000).
Continued follow up of students to check on their performance is very important and the school board should make sure it does this. Follow up on students’ performance, shows that they are concerned about the welfare of the students and they have put the interest of the students as first and important.
In western Pennsylvania, the behavior of a few school board members have in some instances, directly affected the students performance. School board members are the models to the kids of what behavior is suitable.
McAdams (2002, 6, p. 49) points out that kids pay attention to everything they see or hear adults do or say. The way adults conduct themselves, seriously affects the way children grow and behave.
Before 1900, each school had its own board but as schools increased, districts were created and some cities began to select board members by elections. Until the 1970s, many urban school boards were appointed by commissions or judges (First 1992, p. 4).
As political freedom entrenched the idea of right to participate many people wanted to choose their own local school board members. They wanted to be able to choose from among themselves who they want in the school boards. Today, most members to the board are elected from among local community members.
Unfortunately, the performance of board members elected locally has been dismal. Smoley (1999) mentions several reasons why people lack confidence in school boards. One reason is the board members who want to serve on the board to accomplish their own selfish ambitions.
Many board members are only interested in the power and prestige or being a school board member. Another reason why support for the school board wanes are the conflict resulting from micromanaging tendencies of the school boards.
The school board membership has been politicized a lot. Most board members want to be administrators and yet have not qualifications to warrantee their being allowed to manage an educational institution. Much conflict in roles and operations results from pressures coming from the interest groups represented by the different board members.
There are interest groups such as teachers, religious groups, parent associations, who seek membership to promote partisan interests.
Related organizations such are religious movements sponsor candidates in school board elections with trust that the board member will safe guard their interests or causes (Miller, 2010). The promotion of partisan or selfish interests compromises the boards leading to their failures.
The strongest interest group that seeks to control the school boards is the teachers union. School boards candidates approved by teachers union win 92% of the times (Reeves 2003, p. 53). The largest and biggest investors in board member campaigns are the teacher unions.
According to Reeves (2003, p. 54), the other major interest groups that influence school boards are religious groups and taxpayers organizations.
Many former school board members have criticized the operations of school boards due to collusion with teacher unions. Eugene, for example, a former Pennsylvania secretary of education, points out that some forms of informal contract exist between teacher unions and school boards (Elizabeth, 2003).
He argued that the school boards are the governing bodies and they should govern because that is what they are created for, but instead they have given away their authorities in contract where they campaign for candidates for their own selfish ambitions (Elizabeth, 2003).
There is a hypothesis that the teachers unions seek to influence school board formation so as to remain in control or every aspect of education. However, their activities only help to create or lead to creation of weak school boards.
Lack of diversity is another reason why school boards are failing. A study by the Twentieth Century Fund indicates that most school boards have homogenous members i.e. more than 51% comes from a given interest, racial or ethnic group (Danzberger1992, p. 44).
Homogeneity due to interest, race or ethnic background often makes school boards partisan or to be perceived as partisan. Such a scenario does not work in the interest of the school objectives and goals.
It is also interestingly noted that members who are low-income earners are not included in the school boards (Danzberger1992, p. 28).
Danzberger (1992), in his research on school boards, found out that many board members are well to do members of society. As a result of the economic standing divide, many school board members have no idea what the needs of lower socio-economic students are.
It is discernible that being a school board member is tough than many would think. There are more set of laws from the state and federal government, a different generation of children with more needs to deal with. Additionally, he contends that public expectations on boards are way too much.
Dealing with those challenges is not easy despite the fact that board members are usually good citizens. According to McAdams (2006, p. 36), the ineptitude in dealing with the challenges mentioned results from lack of public school management qualifications or knowledge.
Finding the right people to elect to school boards is not easy. As Bryant, a former board member, points out, “Serving on a school board has pressures and big responsibilities which usually contribute to the difficulty in finding enough qualified and skilled board members” (Elizabeth, 2003).
However, the enormity of task is not considered in choosing a school board member in Pennsylvania. The only qualification one need to be a school board member in Pennsylvania is to be over the age of 18 and must have lived in the district for more than a year(Elizabeth, 2003).
According to Pennsylvania School Boards Association, so many schools couldn’t bring forward enough candidates to fill their boards in 2003’s elections and so many ran unopposed (Elizabeth, 2003).
This is a big problem because many of the board members who retained their posts unopposed do not have enough knowledge nor skills to warranty their being educational policy makers even at a local school level. Such members when they are successful to enter the school boards are just there to represent their own interests.
They don’t help the school in any way and this affects students directly. School boards are created to represent the interest of the students and also that of the community because they provide have access to a platform from which they should discuss education matters that affect students and the community as well.
When a candidate is successful to enter the school board, often he or she remains there for many years. If the board member does not have genuine interests in success of the school he or she will for instance miss many meetings and actually do nothing to improve standards.
Those elected to board through being seconded by interest groups are hardest to remove. As long as the interests of the concerned groups are met, such board members do not concern themselves seriously with other concerns of the board.
Such a board member can cause the board to be weak and not able to do anything significant for the school (Elizabeth, 2003). One bad board member can make everything go wrong and students always suffer because their interests are not being represented well.
Sometimes board members show a lot of bad behaviors. They fight, call each other names and in many instances police have been involved when board members fight during the board meetings.
In Pennsylvania, petty politics have affected the running of school boards (Elizabeth, 2003). School board actions are not controlled at all in this state. Some board members look down on their fellow board members and this causes a lot of conflict and hatred among them.
This prevents the smooth running of the school board. When they fail to agree on an issue, many times it ends with a fight and this makes decision making slow. Often this is brought about by those members who are only representing their own special interest and not the interest of the school.
Students are always the victims of poor managed boards because the district could lose its approval on the board. This may cause students to lose for instance state college sponsorships. Often supervisors stay away from such poor managed boards.
A research conducted by Glass as reported by Elizabeth (2003) confirms that school boards need to be reformed and the members replaced completely.
Thinkers like McAdams (2006) point out that any school board member has to be on the job for not more than five years if board efficiency is to be achieved. However, survey by Glass indicated that most board members have been on given school boards for more than nine years (Elizabeth, 2003).
Alternatives: Case against Killing of School Boards
All these problems have caused many to say that all school boards should be killed because they have brought more harm than good to the schools, students, teachers and the community at large. But the federal government rule and policies and also poor economy can be the cause of why school boards are failing.
There is no need of abolishing or killing the school boards because for example if the state legislatures don’t function well, people don’t say they should be abolished (Elizabeth, 2003).
In Pennsylvania maybe the killing of school boards will not help but changing the state federal rules and policies may bring the changes and make the school boards better.
Additionally, training programs targeting school board members i.e. a prequalification of sort or an intensive induction plan could also prove magical in making school boards more efficient and effective.
According to research carried out by Iowa Association of School Boards (2000), districts with high achieving students had school boards that believed that all students have capacity to learn and that schools could teach all students. This resulted in performing well and more improvements and commitment to education.
But where students performed poorly, school boards had low expectations and usually paid attention to issues that they believed made students perform poorly, they focused on such issues as poverty, lack of parental support etc.
These factors were taken as challenges by school boards in high achieving districts; challenges that they had to overcome. They did not take them as excuses for students performing poorly.
In the districts where students performed well, school boards had more knowledge and skills about teaching and learning matters. They understood issues to do with curriculum, staff development and assessment. The boards had well established objects and performance indicators against which they did self evaluations.
Here the school boards were able to recognize the aim and how to improve the school and also the responsibility of the board to support these efforts. They knew how district goals were being managed out by teachers and administrators because they had followed up on these goals.
Boards in the high achievement districts frequently monitored students’ improvement efforts and checked their progress. The commissioned studies and the information as not just stored but actively used in decision making.
Board members in these schools felt a strong urge to excel. They always discussed about the value of making education better for the interest of the students.
High performing boards show interest in the welfare of teachers and encourage further training and development for staff. Further training helps teachers and other school staff to become more effective and efficient thus raising performance standards.
The high performing boards also appreciated the staff members on a regular basis; this encouraged them and made them more resourceful. They showed a great confidence in staff and always recognized them in public or in board meetings.
In low performing districts, board members tended to discourage their staff by making negative comments about them, sometimes removing or firing poor teachers. They never showed recognition of their staff and never showed any interest in the staff contributions. This killed their morale.
School boards who were successful always involved their communities and they knew how they connect with them and always listened to them. They also involved parents in education. A good school board acts as the representatives of the interests of the community and they listen to them and know how to act on what they say.
School boards who performed poorly always knew parents showed less interest in education but did not or took no step to improve the parents’ participation (Iowa Association of School Boards, 2000).
External pressures always made board members in high performing districts to improve and not perform poorly. They always looked for ways to make their schools improve and succeed this is because the board members expected to see improvements quickly. But in poor performing districts board members believed it would take years for students to improve in education.
Understanding how to organize people in the school environment, school boards can start and maintain an improvement effort. By organizing board meetings with teachers and administrators, school boards could explain their actions and goals for the school and this is a good way of creating rapport among stakeholders.
This is always true for school boards in high performing districts but in low performing districts, board members do not describe or communicate to the teachers or the school administration about their goals and actions. This always gives rise to a crisis.
High performing board members always work together with the superintendents to solve problems. They show the superintendents how they are going to meet their goals and they can work together to solve any given problem.
In low performing districts board members leave the responsibility with the superintendents expecting them to learn, pass information and solve problems on their own. This makes things go slow and its time consuming.
Successful board members study an issue together before making a decision while the low performing ones do not discuss or learn the issue together. They don’t get more information on the issue given to them by the superintendent and are rather reactive in their response to issues.
Researchers further established those board members who know the existing structures and how they contributed to the success of schools in their districts are better placed to contribute meaningfully to improvement of educational standards.
They know how teachers and administrators worked together to bring about the success and thus can benchmark practice thus improving performance in their districts.
Smoley (1999) advises that for a board to perform highly, they have to believe in the existing staff, students, teachers as well as the community to bring the changes needed to make the school better.
But if a board believes that new staff, families with high income and even new students could bring a change and boost student achievement, this may affect the school performance and also the performance of the board.
The general community participation in school matter is very crucial (Smoley, 1999). Good communication between the school board and parents/community improves performance. When parents get involved they will know the weakness of their children and help them improve.
They will also know the weakness of their board members and if they show concern board members find a learning opportunity. When parents and community are more involved, they will make sure the best and qualified board members are elected and avoid those who are elected for selfish ambitions of interest groups like teachers.
School Superintendents contribute to the success or failure of a school board(Elizabeth, 2003). They should inform the boards on the ongoing improvement in the district and share the information widely. They should involve members of the board in decision making to make the district schools perform well.
The superintendents in low performing districts failed or fear to introduce a change or they do not share information with the school boards about the intended changes. Poor communication between district superintendents and board member means less participation of board in effecting change.
Successful school boards work together with the superintendents to create district goals based the needs of the students. School goals should be connected to the district goals. Where the boards fail, it should be an indicator of school superintendents not effectively driving actions within the district.
High performing school Superintendents know and appreciate the contribution of community, boards, administrators, and teachers in improving student performance because they make the learning environment better and favorable. But in low performing districts, it’s only the teachers and principals who are recognized for the good performance of the students.
School board members are the link between the community and the school that has to be acknowledged by all stakeholders. Through the boards, the community or the public speaks and influences education processes.
A good board balances community goals and principles and appropriates them with the learning needs of the children in school. Their interest should be on the improvement of the children and not their own selfish ambitions.
All this mentioned characteristics of high performing boards and the interrelation between board members and other stakeholders lay augment the argument that killing school boards is not the only viable solution.
In actual sense, the school boards when effective contribute enormously to good performance in schools. What needs to be addressed is streamlining of policies related to establishment of school boards. The basic qualifications for those to be elected to the board should be revised.
Secondly, considerations should be put in place to instate training or formal seminars that would help school board members appreciate their roles more seriously.
District or state educational boards have to instate ways of assuring quality and high performance of the different school board members. A way of appealing against non performing members ought to be instituted to ensure the community can recall non performing board members.
These changes if effected will entrench accountability in school board operations. Accountability measures will improve and help schools to manage themselves consequently becoming responsible for their own results. Accountability has to begin at the level of effecting required reforms.
Key performance indicators and accountability by school boards has to be effected. This ensures quality management of education as the board is assured of being evaluated and feed back made public. This requires a kind of national monitoring system that will assess performance of boards in each school.
School boards should be given powers to make decisions with regard to performance related issues in schools (McAdams 2006, p.50).
The inclination to assume school boards are only policy bodies and should not be directly concerned about school administration is wrong. In actual sense, they should be involved by working more closely with school administrators.
The reforming of the school board structures and composition will help towards making school boards more effective (Danzberger, 1992, p. 27).
If school boards become effective, their operations will enable every school to improve on their performance. These reforms can be very significant and this will make it easy to meet local community needs and local control of expenditure with the students interest put first.
Conclusion
From the case of western Pennsylvania presented, it is clear that there is a problem and many school boards are failing. The critics point out that school boards are only serving selfish interests.
They are controlled by the economically able or interest groups who sponsor candidates that can push through partisan interests at school boards.
The teachers unions were singled out as the major interest group that controls most school boards. They seek strong representation on school boards so as to influence towards policies or decisions that favor the teachers.
As a result of the mentioned failings, people have advocated for the abolishment of school boards. Killing of school boards, it is argued, will help reduce conflict of interest and confusion in the administration or management of schools. It is further argued that school boards are run by people who have very little knowledge about education issues.
Killing or banning of all school boards isn’t the only answer. Looking into higher performing schools or areas reveals that school boards when effective have a substantive role to play. The nature of work board members carry out does not require a given specialized qualification.
Even board members who are not from the education academic background can make a board successful. Rather than focusing on killing them, it would be better to focus on how to make them effective.
A proper induction or board member sensitization program can be effective in helping people appointed to the board understand their roles. One critical aspect of the program would be to help board members appreciate difference and diversity that informs an educational system.
Should have an open mind and should be willing to learn. Secondly, they should learn humility to acknowledge and work with their own limitations. Finally, they need to know that they are there to represent the wider community. There strength should be in listening to others’ with aim of building consensus that moves schools forward.
The school board members have to be helped to appreciate their role as leaders. Good leadership will lead to improved student performance. When board members are willing to change and reform the education system will generally also change.
They are expected to create missions and visions to guide schools. They should further set improvement goals and learning expectations for students and should always celebrate success and encourage students.
Their support is does not end with setting goals and motivating students. The board should ensure necessary resources are available for proper learning to happen. Funding schools should be based on enrolment and real identified needs.
It is only the school boards that can identify, verify and strongly push for meeting of the special needs in schools. Each should have teachers and the teachers have to be availed with all necessary tools of trade. It is the work of the board to see to it that the teachers are comfortable.
Finally, school boards have to learn to appreciate the interaction between local community and schools. The boards should encourage community’s support in the improvement of student education.
The participation of local community is crucial in guaranteeing success or improvement in education. One way of encouraging community participation is encouraging public accountability of the board, administration, teachers and any other stakeholders.
It was noted that the worst performing boards are in low performing areas and they often have many excuses for the low performance.
The school boards should work on developing leadership in the school and also the community and their main interest should be improvement; instead of looking at pressures as barriers they should see them as challenges to make them strong and successful.
It is already in practice in Pennsylvania but more creative thinking has to be infused into it. In Pennsylvania, the school boards association holds many workshops for board members every year. This is essential for training them and ways of improving it have to be looked into.
For example, the workshops, in place, are not obligatory and there are board members who do not attend. The reason might be the board members pay for these workshops and trainings themselves. But these trainings should be encouraged because they contribute so much to the improvement of school boards.
In Pennsylvania and many other states, board members are not paid and this kills their morale. Paying them would make them improve and work more hard. To facilitate or reduce salary or allowance costs, the boards should be made leaner.
Reducing the size of the board would make it easier to work with. The lesser the members of the board, the more effective each board member becomes as opposed to encouraging joy riders.
School board and district superintendents should work together to improve education standards. Superintendent should respect the school boards and their roles and school boards also should respect the authority of the superintendent. This way conflicts on who to do what will be avoided and smooth running of the school will be encouraged.
Reference List
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Danzberger, P. J. (1992). Facing the Challenge: The Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on School Governance. New York: The Twentieth Century Fund Press.
Elizabeth, J. (Sunday, November 30, 2003). School Boards’ Worth In Doubt: Some Think Members Are In Over Their Heads Due To Complex Duties. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Web.
First, F. P. (1992) School Boards: Changing Local Control. Oklahoma: McCutchan Pub. Corp.
Iowa Association of School Boards. (2000), Student Achievement. Iowa Association of School Board. Web.
McAdams, R. D. (2006). What School Boards Can Do: Reform Governance For Urban Schools. New York: Teachers College Press.
Miller, M. (2010). A Modesty Proposal: First Kill All the School Boards. The Atlantic Monthly Group. Web.
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