WSSDA’s Boards of Distinction program is about helping school boards govern successfully by aligning their efforts with the Washington School Board Standards.
A New Approach for 2024
Taking a longer view of the board’s role in student success
The Boards of Distinction program has always focused on encouraging school boards to consider how their decisions, actions, and leadership contribute to the success of their students. These changes don’t happen overnight – or even in the course of a year or two – so school boards need to take the long view. Decisions and actions of the board today can reverberate for multiple years, and lasting change can take decades.
Closing Opportunity Gaps: a Long-term and Ongoing Commitment
Acknowledging the long-term nature of closing opportunity gaps, the Boards of Distinction application has been revised to recognize that a board’s commitment to visionary leadership, effective governance, and strategic advocacy can take a few years to show up in data indicating improved student outcomes, especially in disaggregated student groups. This year, boards can highlight their decisions, actions, and initiatives that have, over time, led to decreasing opportunity gaps and increasing levels of student success.
Applicants should start by considering how work that your board committed to one to five years ago is closing opportunity gaps now. The application allows you to share the results from your board’s initiatives or decisions from up to five years ago. By analyzing the multi-year data, your board can ensure that the resulting long-term positive impacts continue to grow. Finally, you have the opportunity to share how your board continues to focus on that work for long-term, continued success.
In the application, your board should also clearly articulate which actions of the board led to creating conditions and expectations for better student outcomes, and which parts of an initiative were operationalized by school staff.
The Application Process
August 1 – September 16, 2024 submission window
To be considered for recognition as a Board of Distinction, boards fill out an application, which doubles as an exercise in self-reflection on the work of the board and its impacts on students over time. The submission window for 2024 is August 1 – September 16. Start the process early to give plenty of time to complete the application and gather supporting documentation.
Tell Your District’s Story
First, the board considers its areas of focus over the past 1-5 year and looks for data to support their success. The key is connecting positive student outcomes, including closing opportunity gaps, with decisions or actions the board made. Among those successes, the board will identify how their actions closed opportunity gaps and exemplified two specific Washington School Board Standards .
The strategies and tactics described by successful applicants will be shared widely to inform and inspire the work of others. All Boards of Distinction are recognized at the WSSDA Annual Conference, and their stories may be shared via WSSDA’s website and in feature articles in Direct, WSSDA’s quarterly newsmagazine.
A Shorter Application
For 2024, boards will be asked to write about one area of board-supported student success instead of two as in previous years. As before, applicants will need to provide supporting evidence of success in closing opportunity gaps and aligning their efforts with one of the Washington School Board Standards and two corresponding benchmarks. And the distinction between the board’s efforts and the work of staff will be clearly articulated.
After Applying
Applications are reviewed by a panel of reviewers that includes former and current educational service district superintendents, State Board of Education board members, former school directors, and other education leaders in Washington state. Scoring is based on how well applicants show alignment with the Washington School Board Standards, support their statements with data, and demonstrate a link between outcomes and decisions or actions made by the board.
All successful applicants will be named a Board of Distinction. Then, within the categories of small, medium, and large school districts, a board that demonstrates exemplary actions and outcomes may also be honored as a Board of the Year.
