Governing Well: A Board Member's View

By Donald R. McAdams

Governance matters. Of course it does. Effective public school governance does not guarantee high-performing schools, but without effective governance, good schools are the exception, not the rule.

America’s public schools are not the wasteland some critics charge. But in this information age, with school reform a priority in every advanced economy, does anyone think even our best schools are good enough? And what about our worst schools, especially those serving America’s poorest children? Need I ask the question?

So, school reform, or renewal, or just continuous improvement, whatever one wishes to call it, is a national priority, and rightly so. Since A Nation at Risk in 1983, school reformers—governors, legislators, business leaders, superintendents, principals, teachers and teachers’ union leaders, scholars, school board members, and others—have proposed and implemented massive changes. Standards and accountability, restructuring, and the introduction of marketplace forces—charters and public school choice—are...