School boards diligently strive to demonstrate their accountability amidst continual criticism, currently at a heightened level following the COVID-19 pandemic, with ensuing drops in student achievement. The responsibilities of a school board are often misunderstood by their community, and school boards themselves are struggling in this era of…

The purpose of this study is to compare education and inspection systems and to reveal their similarities and differences in terms of structuring and functioning. Thus, it is aimed to make suggestions about education supervision in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus by determining its current state. In the study, the educational supervision…

This article examines how school trustees (i.e., elected school-board members) conceive of their own leadership role and work with other levels of leadership within school districts. In a mixed-method study, a total of 121 school trustees were surveyed and 12 were interviewed across Ontario. A framework is proposed to better understand the tension…

This paper examines the financial transparency and accountability practices before and after the 2023 state takeover of the Houston Independent School District (HISD). Superintendent Mike Miles and his Board of Managers reallocated critical district resources towards troubling new "priorities," while the district was facing a sizable…

Lone Star Governance (LSG), a governance model rooted in school board best practices, was developed for Texas school board trustees and their superintendent to improve student outcomes (Crabill, 2017). This phenomenological study investigated school board members' perceptions compared to the perceptions of superintendents regarding the LSG…

In the United States, most students attend a public school in a district overseen by a democratically elected school board. In political science, school boards are often portrayed as ten thousand democracies (Berkman and Plutzer, 2005). School board members are often described as "citizens-policymakers" because they "constitute a…

Multi-Academy Trusts (MAT) have developed organically in England since 2010. As a result, there appears to be a lack of consistency in the interpretation of delegated responsibilities of Local Governing Bodies (LGB). In a small-scale study of Headteacher (HT) accountability within one English MAT, governance was revealed as a major cause for…

Should school boards be in charge of schools? School boards serve as sites for local democracy, but their power has been under siege for over half a century. This study provides results from an original survey in order to assess who Americans want in charge of their schools. Given that the strength of school boards is supposed to be their ability…

Educational outcomes for Black & brown students are the result of well-functioning school systems overwrought with top-down bureaucracy that stifle school-based leaders from generating school-based solutions. The dominant explanation is the growing power and influence of politically-driven school board members cut off from local, national, and…

Evaluating the superintendent is the paramount duty of the school board. Current evaluation practices are inconsistent and meaningless for providing effective feedback. The researcher was interested in understanding this issue from the school board's perspective. Research questions addressed were: '(1) What current evaluation practices…

The purpose of this study was threefold: (a) to identify the priorities that Texas school board presidents perceive to be most important in their role as a school board member; (b) to describe the specific activities, behaviors, and actions that Texas school board presidents say they take to support the priorities they identify; and (c) to compare…

We survey 137 charter school administrators and 129 board members and find that U.S. charter school internal controls are perceived to be relatively strong overall. However, board independence, board communication of internal control responsibilities to school personnel, lines of communication between the board and school personnel, and reporting…

Across the globe, education quality has become synonymous with student performance. The shift towards test-based accountability (TBA) has changed what is required of schools and what it means to be a 'good teacher'. Different tools may trigger a performance orientation within schools, from administrative (such as the Inspectorate) to market…

This qualitative study sought to learn why authorizers offer current under-performing charter schools the option of turnaround, as well as how, and what models of accountability they use to set up the balance of autonomy and accountability to improve low-performing charters rather than close them. Conducting interviews with nine individuals and…

The Board of Education's mission is to equitably educate the whole child so that every student graduates with the tools to reach their full potential (Houston Independent School District (HISD), 2019). To succeed in their mission, the board participates in Lone Star Governance, whose intent is to provide a continuous improvement model for…