The Essential School Board Book highlights effective practices that are common to high-functioning boards around the country--boards that are working successfully with their superintendents and communities to improve teaching and learning.

Written from the unique perspective of school board members who lead and serve districts of all sizes, this book provides succinct, straightforward information that school board members and superintendents can put to immediate use. Eadie explores five key behavioral traits of high-impact school boards: - Concentration on governing above all other board work - Development of the board's capacity to govern - Active participation in leading district strategic change - Meticulous attention to keeping the board-superintendent partnership healthy - Active participation in reaching out a wider community Five Habits of High-Impact School Boards provides school board members, superintendents, senior administrators, foundation executives, and graduate students in schools of education, with practical, thoroughly tested guidance for successful governing work and a board-superintendent partnership that is close, productive, and enduring.

There is no calling, no more vital responsibility, than the education of our nation's and world's future leaders. Independent and faith-based schools succeed and thrive in the presence of visionary leadership. In its absence, schools struggle and often fail to achieve their mission. The success story for schools is the strength of the leadership found in the relationship between the head of school, the board chair, and all trustees. It is through this relationship, partnership, and acceptance of roles and responsibilities where this health and this success can be found.

If there is a "culture war" taking place in the United States, one of the most interesting, if under-the-radar, battlegrounds is in local school board elections. Rarely does the pitch of this battle reach national attention, as it did in Kansas when the state school board—led by several outspoken conservative Christians—voted to delete evolution from the state's science curriculum and its standardized tests in August 1999. That action rattled not only the educational and scientific communities, but concerned citizens around the nation as well. While the movement of the Christian Right into national and state politics has been well documented, this is the first book to examine their impact on local school board politics. While the Kansas decision was short-lived, during the past decade in school districts around the country, conservative Christian majorities have voted to place limits on sex education, to restrict library books, to remove references to gays and lesbians in the classroom, and to promote American culture as superior to other cultures. School Board Battles studies the motivation, strategies, and electoral success of Christian Right school board candidates. Based on interviews, and using an extensive national survey of candidates as well as case studies of two school districts in which conservative Christians ran and served on local boards, Melissa M. Deckman gives us a surprisingly complex picture of these candidates. She reveals weaker ties to national Christian Right organizations—and more similarities between these conservative candidates and their more secular counterparts than might be expected. Deckman examines important questions: Why do conservative Christians run for school boards? How much influence has the Christian Right actually had on school boards? How do conservative Christians govern? School Board Battles is an in-depth and in-the-trenches look at an important encounter in the "culture war"—one that may well determine the future of our nation's youth.

School boards are fighting for their survival. Almost everything that they do is subject to regulations handed down from city councils, state boards of education, legislatures, and courts. As recent mayoral and state takeovers in such cities as Baltimore, Chicago, and New York make abundantly clear, school boards that do not fulfill the expectations of other political players may be stripped of what few independent powers they still retain. Teachers unions exert growing influence over board decision-making processes. And with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal government has aggressively inserted itself into matters of local education governance. B esieged is the first full-length volume in many years to systematically examine the politics that surround school boards. A group of highly renowned scholars, relying on both careful case studies and quantitative analyses, examine how school boards fare when they interact with their political superiors, teachers unions, and the public. For the most part, the picture that emerges is sobering: while school boards perform certain administrative functions quite well, the political pressures they face undermine their capacity to institute the wide-ranging school reforms that many voters and local leaders are currently demanding.

Lead into the future effectively with the Governance Core approach! Designed to guide educational leadership past difficult and formidable challenges, the governance system outlined in this book will lead to school districts and schools operating at the highest levels of effectiveness. Davis Campbell and Michael Fullan call for school boards, superintendents and school leaders to work cohesively with the same mindset to raise clarity, status, and efficacy. Practical and authentic, the Governance Core is based upon: A governance mindset A shared moral imperative A unified, cohesive governance system A commitment to system-wide coherence A focus on continuous improvement in the district