Partisan Politics, Teaching to Fish, & Progress Measures

TESBC: As coaches, we are ruthlessly and unapologetically non-partisan. In a district doing impressive board work, they called us because of a nasty partisan divide and board meetings had devolved into recurring red vs blue battles unrelated to improving student outcomes. We arrived, helped them focus on student outcomes, and they've been an entirely different board since. Had we staked out a clear claim on the left or right side of the aisle, we wouldn't have been deemed fair and neutral brokers; we wouldn't have been able to help them help their students. For this reason -- for preserving our ability to work with all of our boards regardless of hue -- that we remain ferociously and intentionally non-partisan.

Obviously, there are costs to this stance. It means that the things written on my heart regarding my own political beliefs are unwelcome in this work. That is a high cost to pay and one that some are, understandably, uninterested in paying. But even if we were partisan in leaning, our stance is that what matters most are the vision and values of each community, not what I think their vision and values should be. As coaches who have chosen to lift up the vision and values of each community, it means that we do so even when those don't align with our own. There is not a school board I have coached yet who has chosen a set of Goals and Guardrails that are the ones I would choose if I were still a school board member. But it's not their job to conform to my views just as it's not my job to conform to theirs. 

In the days and months ahead as public education is pulled further into the partisan political fray, it becomes ever more important that we, as certified coaches, honor the expectations of our certification while performing our duties. Among those expectations is political neutrality. We are not without personal perspective, but we do not force that upon our clients. And we clearly have strong perspectives about effective school board governance which we do impress upon our clients. But we actively avoid conducting our coaching duties in a manner that is, or has the appearance of being, partisan.

TESBC: The fundamental distinction that guides our approach to these types of requests is coach vs consultant. As a consultant, your ethical obligation is to being as helpful to your client as possible, so if they need fish, give them a fish. As a coach, your ethical obligation is to creating a safe space for your client's transformation, so if they need fish, teach them to fish. 

While we certainly provide examples to our clients, for the most part we only do so after they've created a rough draft of their own. This nudges them to do their own thinking and to come up with work product that matches their community, not someone elses. Once they've created a rough draft, then we gladly show them examples that they can compare and contrast. 

It's worth noting that this approach is for items where the client needs to learn the knowledge and skills for themselves (like with monitoring reports). If that's not the case (like with  the time use evaluation instrument), then there's not much benefit to having them do it themselves and we should just save them time.

If you've ever been asked why progress measures matter, why monitoring progress matters, or been asked what correlations are, this article is for you.

Have your clients ever asked why we recommend no more than 3 goals and 3 guardrails? This article does a great job of explaining why.

Total Minutes: 345mins

Minutes Focused on Student Outcomes: 65mins

Key Topics:  financial & operational health, personnel items, college and career readiness

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