The Board’s Role in Assessing Trusted Leadership

Dr. Toby A. Travis

Aug 31

7 min read

Representative Evidence | Written Expectations | Reasonable Interpretation | Supported Improvement

Abstract:

This article examines the school Board’s responsibility to assess Head of School leadership through a fair, research-based, and data-informed process. It explains why anecdotal concerns and open-ended survey comments should be treated as diagnostic signals rather than representative verdicts and presents the TrustED® School Leader 360 Assessment as a means of identifying meaningful leadership patterns. Through a case study example, the article demonstrates the importance of survey safeguards, evidence triangulation, contextual interpretation, clearly established written expectations, and improvement plans tied to measurable compliance and growth. It further argues that trustworthy leadership assessment requires Boards to evaluate their own governance practices while ensuring accountability without moving the goalposts on performance.

A school Board has a duty to hold its Head accountable. Yet accountability is not collecting impressions, tallying complaints, or deciding whether Board members “feel good” about the leader. Faithful assessment requires a disciplined process: define expectations in advance, gather representative evidence, interpret it in context, and connect improvement to written expectations.

Consider a case drawn from familiar school patterns, that we’ll call Aspire Academy. After a demanding first year, the Aspire Academy Board created their own non-professional leadership assessment survey, and the results contained three sharply critical comments about the Head’s communication. One Board member called the three comments “a clear vote of no confidence.” Yet quantitative results were broadly positive, response was uneven, and two comments concerned the same unpopular schedule change. Would memorable stories become a verdict, or would the Board examine the evidence?

Anecdotes Are Signals, Not Scores

Boards should listen carefully to stakeholder concerns. A troubling account may reveal misconduct, a safety concern, or a recurring leadership weakness that deserves immediate investigation. But an anecdote is not a representative sample, and open-ended survey comments should never be treated as a vote of the community.

Research demonstrates why. In a study of 661 employees, relatively dissatisfied respondents were more likely to submit open-ended comments; those comments were disproportionately negative and tended to be longer.¹ This does not invalidate criticism. It means vivid comments can distort a Board’s perception of prevalence. Contented people may feel little urgency to respond, while disappointed people may feel a strong need to be heard.

In the Aspire Academy case, the Board chair wisely paused the conversation. The three comments were recorded as signals requiring inquiry, not converted into three “votes” against the Head. That distinction protected both the commenters’ concerns and the integrity of the evaluation.

Decide What the Data Are For

Before collecting feedback, the Board should determine whether the process is developmental, summative, or both, and say so clearly. Developmental feedback helps a leader recognize patterns, set goals, and pursue coaching. Summative evaluation determines whether established employment expectations have been met. The same evidence may inform both, but standards and consequences cannot be improvised after results arrive.

A Board should state who will see raw and aggregated results, how confidentiality will be protected, and how findings may affect formal evaluation. A 360-degree instrument must not be presented as a growth opportunity and then quietly converted into a disciplinary device. Multisource-feedback research suggests change is generally modest unless recipients accept the need, set goals, believe improvement is possible, and receive support.⁴ Candor and growth are more likely when the process is trustworthy.

Ask the Right Questions—and Govern the Survey Well

A tool such as the TrustED® School Leader 360 Assessment (TSL360) broadens participation across the leader’s span of influence and converts individual perceptions into patterns that can be examined over time. Its items are not improvised questions about personality or popularity. Each is grounded in school-leadership research and examines beliefs, relational practices, professional competence, adaptability, cultural stewardship, communication, and organizational clarity associated with trusted leadership.^2. The instrument organizes these practices through six interdependent TrustED® components, using the illustration of a bridge: Foundation (Beliefs & Values), Substructure (Connection & Support), Bearings (Flexibility & Involvement), Girders (Adaptability & Contextualization), Superstructure (Culture & Relationships), and Deck (Clarity & Order).

Those constructs align with broader research identifying four high-leverage domains of school leadership: instructionally focused interactions with teachers, a productive school climate, collaboration and professional learning, and strategic management of personnel and resources.³ Asking research-grounded questions reduces the temptation to evaluate a Head merely on likability, isolated outcomes, or a trustee’s preferred leadership style.

Sound questions still require sound survey governance. A neutral party should administer the instrument when possible (e.g., The SchoolRight Group - www.schoolright.net). The Board should set anonymity thresholds, monitor response rates, avoid segments so small that respondents can be identified, and administer the survey at comparable points in the school cycle. Board members should not search for critical commenters’ identities. Repeated administrations should use stable constructs so changes reflect trends rather than redesigned questions.

Triangulate the Evidence and Account for Context

No single instrument should carry the full weight of evaluation. Survey patterns should be tested against internal monitoring reports, documented outcomes, direct inspection, where authorized, external reviews, school health indicators, and prior-year data. Qualitative comments can suggest questions for follow-up interviews or focus groups, but those inquiries should be structured to test a pattern, not to build a case around a conclusion already reached.

Context matters as well. Enrollment shifts, staffing shortages, inherited systems, resource constraints, community conflict, and external events can affect results long after a decision is made. Leadership often has a time lag: a Head may inherit declining morale yet be taking appropriate steps whose effects will not be visible for months. Conversely, strong short-term outcomes may rest on systems that are becoming unsustainable. The Board should distinguish what the Head controlled, what was inherited, and what evidence shows about the quality of the leader’s response.

When the Aspire Academy Board triangulated its findings, it learned that the communication scores had dipped primarily among families affected by the schedule change. Records showed that notices had been timely, but follow-up conversations revealed that the rationale had not been explained clearly. The evidence did not support a sweeping conclusion that the Head was untrustworthy. It did reveal a focused opportunity to strengthen change communication.

Written Expectations Are the Evaluation Rubric

Here the Board must make a crucial distinction: the TSL360 is a research-based source of evidence; it is not permission to invent new conditions of employment after the fact. A Head of School, like every employee, should be evaluated only against expectations established in writing when the employment agreement begins or added prospectively by mutual agreement.

Under Carver Policy Governance®, the Board defines the Ends to be achieved and the operational means that would be unacceptable. It then grants the chief executive freedom to use any reasonable interpretation of those policies. Monitoring asks whether the interpretation is reasonable and whether evidence demonstrates achievement or compliance. That ongoing monitoring constitutes the chief executive’s evaluation.⁵

Consequently, a separate job description or evaluation form must not introduce preferences, priorities, or behavioral expectations absent from the Board’s adopted policies (i.e., management/executive limitation policies). If survey data reveal persistent concern about communication, employee treatment, financial stewardship, or another practice, the Board should ask: Which written expectation does this evidence illuminate? If none applies, the concern may prompt clearer policy for the future, but it cannot fairly become a retroactive performance standard. Data should sharpen accountability, not move the goalposts.

Use Growth Data Without Moving the Goalposts

An improvement plan should never direct a Head simply to “communicate better,” “improve leadership,” or “restore confidence.” It should identify the applicable written expectation; explain the specific deficiency in performance or evidence; define what satisfactory evidence will look like; establish support, deadlines, and monitoring dates; and preserve the Head’s authority to choose reasonable operational means. Research on principal evaluation indicates that systems are more likely to promote improvement when expectations are clear and coherent, and evaluation is connected to specific goals, actionable feedback, professional development, and support.⁶

Longitudinal TSL360 results can then reveal improvement, stagnation, or an emerging concern. Trends should illuminate compliance with established expectations and guide development, not create new expectations retrospectively. A baseline should be compared with later administrations using comparable respondent groups, timing, and items. A score that changes by a few points may matter less than a recurring cross-group pattern or a sustained shift across multiple administrations.

In the case of Aspire Academy, the Board connected the concern to an existing expectation for timely, transparent stakeholder communication. The Head proposed a communication protocol, received coaching, and reported progress at scheduled intervals. A later survey showed stronger understanding of major decisions across stakeholder groups. The improvement mattered, but so did the fairness of the process: the Head knew the standard, retained authority over implementation, and received a genuine opportunity to grow.

The Board Must Evaluate Its Own Stewardship

Leadership assessment is incomplete if the Board never examines itself. Board members should annually assess whether their policies are clear, their monitoring is disciplined, their voice is unified, and their conduct supports rather than undermines the Head’s delegated authority. They should ask whether individual Board members have bypassed agreed channels, elevated isolated complaints, issued informal instructions, or withheld support necessary for improvement.

For Aspire Academy, the Board recognized that several trustees had been forwarding complaints directly to one another without a shared protocol for receiving and investigating concerns. The Bard corrected its own practice, clarified how stakeholder concerns would be handled, and strengthened its monitoring calendar. Self-assessment did not excuse the Head from accountability; it made accountability more credible.

The Board’s role is neither passive affirmation nor reactionary fault-finding. It is disciplined stewardship. A trustworthy Board listens to every concern without allowing the loudest voice to become the whole community. It uses research-grounded instruments to identify patterns, multiple sources to test them, written expectations to define accountability, and specific evidence to support improvement. When boards assess leadership this way, they do more than fairly evaluate a Head of School: they model the clarity, consistency, courage, and trust they expect the Head to cultivate throughout the school.

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Endnotes

Reanna M. Poncheri, Jennifer T. Lindberg, Lori Foster Thompson, and Eric A. Surface, “A Comment on Employee Surveys: Negativity Bias in Open-Ended Responses,” Organizational Research Methods 11, no. 3 (2008): 614–630, https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428106295504.
Toby A. Travis, TrustED®: The Bridge to School Improvement (2021), chap. 9, “Assessing the Structural Integrity of the Bridge,” especially “Data-Driven School Leadership Professional Development” and “The Value of a School Leader 360 Assessment.”
Jason A. Grissom, Anna J. Egalite, and Constance A. Lindsay, How Principals Affect Students and Schools: A Systematic Synthesis of Two Decades of Research (New York: The Wallace Foundation, 2021), https://doi.org/10.59656/EL-SB1065.001.
James W. Smither, Manuel London, and Richard R. Reilly, “Does Performance Improve Following Multisource Feedback? A Theoretical Model, Meta-Analysis, and Review of Empirical Findings,” Personnel Psychology 58, no. 1 (2005): 33–66, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005.514_1.x.
GOVERN for IMPACT, “Policy Governance® Source Document,” produced in consultation with John and Miriam Carver, rev. February 2021, principles 6–10, https://govern.memberclicks.net/assets/article-pdfs/PG%20source%20document.pdf.
Madeline Mavrogordato, Peter Youngs, Morgaen L. Donaldson, Hana Kang, and Shaun M. Dougherty, “Motivating Leadership Change and Improvement: How Principal Evaluation Addresses Intrinsic and Extrinsic Sources of Motivation,” Educational Administration Quarterly 59, no. 5 (2023): 965–1001, https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X231188706.