The Best Boards: Principle #1

This is the first in a series of posts about factors that distinguish the best boards from those that are merely average or worse. By "best" I mean those boards that add value to their schools, rather than neutrally discharging their fiduciary obligations or subtracting value by yielding to distractions. Attention deficit disorder is a useful metaphor for what ails too many independent and international school boards. We find boards to be highly distractible, lured by the siren song of bright shiny objects like parent complaints, losing sports teams, student attrition, and more. Smart boards stay focused; they know what matters most and seldom allow distractions to take them off course.Great Boards Principle #1: Governing in the Aggregate, Not the ParticularGovernance is an activity that functions best when driven by data, not anecdote. Schools are anecdote rich environments--every teacher and parent is a source. The best boards learn how to separate the particular from the aggregate and stay laser-focused on the plural rather than the singular. Rather than diving down the rabbit hole of a story about one (or even a few) parent's dissatisfaction with university placements, the savvy board knows to look to the overall picture of the placement pattern and how well the school does at placing students in the diverse array of schools that suit them best.Anecdotes are noise. Data are hits.