Our Projects

Resources

• Current Initiative: Center for Public Education
  The Center for Public Education is an initiative of the National School Boards Association and National School Boards Foundation to encourage productive discussions of public education by presenting thoughtful, accurate information about schools and school boards in plain English. The project’s goal is to create more effective school boards and a more engaged public that value and support their public schools.
  
• Are We There Yet?
  Research and Guidelines on Schools' Use of the Internet. This initiative included a national survey of school technology decision-makers on the use of the Internet in schools, leadership attitudes, decision-making processes, the future of technology, schools, and related topics. The report, produced in May 2002, includes guidelines for school leaders.
  
• Improving School Board Decision Making - The Data Connection
  To help their districts raise student achievement, the 95,000 school board members across the country need credible indicators of school and student performance. The National School Boards Foundation, in partnership with the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, and with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, developed tools and training kits to help school board members inform their policymaking with data that allows them to identify deficiencies, to think strategically about reaching goals, and to forge creative solutions.
  
• Urban School Boards Initiative
  This initiative, funded by the BellSouth Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Motorola Foundation focuses on two fundamental questions: How can urban school boards facilitate improved student achievement? and How will the boards themselves have to change to be effective?
  
• Leadership Matters: Transforming Urban School Boards
  Leadership Matters focuses on concrete strategies to help urban school boards become more effective in leading their districts to improve student achievement.
  
• Safe & Smart: Research and Guidelines for Children's Use of the Internet
  The National School Boards Foundation, with funding from the Children's Television Workshop and Microsoft, partnered with Grunwald Associates in a project that gathered and analyzed high-quality data and developed guidelines for parents and school leaders to inform their decisionmaking.
  
• School Board Online Self-Evaluation Instrument
  This initiative, funded by the Good Samaritan Foundation and in conjunction with Jossey-Bass Publishers, the National School Boards Foundation published Dr. Eugene Smoley's research on school board effectiveness grounded in actual experiences and actions of 45 school board members in Delaware, and made his scorable self-evaluation instrument available via the web for use by school board members, state school boards association trainers, and others.
  
• Education Leadership Tool Kit: Change and Technology in America's Schools
  Funded by the National Science Foundation in 1995, this project provides hands-on help for school board members to become leaders in bringing technology to school districts. An online tool kit and a hard-copy companion guide include successful school models, research findings, discussion guides, and strategies for using technology to improve student achievement.
  
• Increasing Parental Involvement in School Governance
  Studies show that the most accurate predictor of student achievement in school is not income or social status, but the extent to which a student’s family becomes involved in their child’s education at school and in the community. The National School Boards Foundation and Family Education Network developed and produced a series of articles specifically for parents on school boards through a grant funded by the AT&T Foundation.
  
• The School Board of Tomorrow
  Harnessing the power of technology to bring our schools into the next century is the challenge facing all school districts.