From time to time TBEC makes recommendations for state policy that it believes will strengthen the Texas public school system and improve its performance.

The TBEC Board of Directors adopts “policy goal statements” after careful research and extensive dialogue among business and education leaders. The statements suggest issues that policy makers should address and include recommendations regarding the topic of each statement.

Public School Governance: a nationwide concern

At this time there is considerable concern in Texas and the nation about the governance function in public education. These concerns come from a range of perceptions and experiences:

• School districts can be distracted from serving the best interests of students, schools and communities by conflict within the board or between the board and the superintendent.
• There may be a lack of long-term continuity and stability in district leadership necessary for improved student and school performance.
• Boards sometimes respond more to narrow special interests rather than to the broader needs of the entire district.
• Boards sometimes interfere with management or get bogged down in administrative detail rather than providing strategic leadership for education in the community.
• District resources may not always be well managed or used in a cost-effective way.
• Urban school districts are large, complex organizations that require leadership expertise and experience generally lacking in many elected school board members.

Such concerns give rise to calls for reforms in school governance or, in the extreme, suggestions that locally elected school boards should be abolished altogether. Many noted education reformers and national organizations have called for reforms in public school governance. Hugh Price, President of the National Urban League, and others have advocated for the abolition of locally elected school boards. In several large urban situations, policy makers have acted decisively in response to calls for reform. The public schools systems in Baltimore, Boston, Detroit and Chicago, for instance, are governed by school boards appointed by the city mayor and the superintendents are answerable directly to the mayors.

Improving Public School Governance in Texas

The vast majority of the more than 7,000 trustees serving on the 1,042 local school boards in the State are responsible citizens who seek to do what is right for the students and their communities. With few exceptions, they carry out their work without the scandals, acrimonious personal relationships, or questionable actions that characterize the worst governance situations across the nation. In fact, only a small percentage of Texas school districts experience governance problems that requires outside intervention.

However, the overall performance of Texas school boards should be improved and school boards can make greater contributions to the efforts to improve public school performance in our state. TBEC recognizes also that there have been certain local public school governance situations in Texas that have reached similar levels of dissatisfaction causing dramatic interventions in other states.