Return to search

The Relationship Between School Board Governance Behaviors and Student Achievement

This non-experimental quantitative study examined the relationship between school board governance behavior (i.e. boardsmanship) and student achievement scores. Pearson's r correlation was utilized to examine the relationship.
Boardsmanship was defined by scores on the Board Self-Assessment Survey (BSAS) © designed by, and used with permission from, the Washington State School Directors Association (WSSDA). The BSAS consisted of a 69 item survey organized around 5 board Standards, 22 Benchmarks, and 69 Key Indicators (i.e. survey items). Board members from all 121 high school districts in Montana were invited to participate in the online survey. Seventy-four board members from 27 school districts returned complete and useable surveys for a response rate of 22.3% (27/121).
Student achievement was defined by scores in reading, math, and science assessed by Montana's Criterion Reference Test (CRT) given to all 10th graders. CRT scores were obtained from the Office of Public Instruction in Helena, MT. Data from both the BSAS and CRT were collected during the spring of AY 2011-2012.
Statistically significant relationships were found between several aspects of student achievement and numerous elements of boardsmanship. Student achievement significantly correlated with some aspect of all five board Standards such as (a) providing responsible school district governance, (b) setting and communicating high expectations for student learning with clear goals and plans for meeting those expectations, (c) creating the conditions district wide for student and staff success, (d) holding the school district accountable for meeting student learning expectations, and (e) engaging the community. School boards that accomplish the items identified in the BSAS govern districts with the highest achievement scores. Each of these board Standards were further explicated through the Benchmarks and statistically significant Key Indicators which describe specific actions the board could take in order to participate in district efforts to raise student achievement. Boards do play a role in student achievement and their actions matter.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:MONTANA/oai:etd.lib.umt.edu:etd-07082013-121523
Date17 July 2013
CreatorsLorentzen, Ivan J.
ContributorsWilliam P McCaw, Kathleen Budge, Beverly Ann Chin, John Matt, Frances O'Reilly
PublisherThe University of Montana
Source SetsUniversity of Montana Missoula
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.umt.edu/theses/available/etd-07082013-121523/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Montana or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

Page generated in 0.0015 seconds