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September 18, 2007
Can’t get no dissatisfaction
While many of you were watching football last weekend, BoardBuzz was hanging out with 150 or so researchers and school board members convened by our friends at the Iowa Association of School Boards to learn about dissatisfaction theory. No, this has nothing to do with a plot to get Mick Jagger to go home and act like the grandpa he is. According to researchers Frank Lutz and Laurence Iannaccone, the Dissatisfaction Theory of American Democracy says simply that when voters are dissatisfied, they get out and vote to change whatever it is they are dissatisfied with.
Dissatisfaction theory plays out dramatically in school board elections. Unhappy voters have been shown to turn out in larger than usual numbers to get rid of board incumbents when their constituents don’t like something happening with the schools. The newly elected board members, in turn, fire the superintendent, hire a new one, and make policy changes.
Conversely, the low voter turn out in many school board elections – sometimes as low as 15 percent -- can be seen to reflect voter satisfaction with the way schools are going. But before you think BoardBuzz is suggesting a “keep out the vote” campaign, remember that low turnout can also be a sign that the community flat out doesn’t care, which is never a good thing, especially for school leaders attempting to do more for their students.
Related to this, the Lighthouse Project, IASB’s own groundbreaking research of school board effectiveness, shows that acceptance of the status quo is a characteristic of low-achieving districts along with a tendency to attribute students’ low performance to factors outside of school. School boards of high-performing districts, on the other hand, are more likely to express confidence in their students’ ability to achieve and their professional staff’s capacity to make it happen. They also put their beliefs to work by creating conditions that support school improvement.
Perhaps what our schools really need from their communities is a bit of constructive dissatisfaction -- communities that are never quite satisfied with “good enough” and support their schools' ongoing efforts to do even better.
The research presented at the symposium will appear in the book Relevancy and Revelation: The Future of School Board Governance to be published by Roman & Littlefield Education in early 2008. For information on the Lighthouse Project, drop in on the Iowa School Boards Association.
Posted September 18, 2007 4:14 PM |
School Boards
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