The board evaluates
everyone but itself.
Most board self-evaluations are a form nobody wanted to fill in, discussed once, and filed. BoardEval takes private input from every member, shows the board exactly where it agrees and where it doesn’t, and gives you a meeting agenda that ends in two to four things you will actually do.
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Everyone rating is also being rated
That single fact makes a board self-evaluation different from every other evaluation your district runs — and it is why the usual survey tool is the wrong instrument for it.
Private input, or it isn't honest
A board member asked to rate their colleagues while the chair can see the answer will write something diplomatic. Individual responses are unreadable by every role, the submitted copy carries no link back to a person, and nothing is released until enough members have answered that the result can't be worked backwards.
Disagreement is the finding
Where the board splits is the most useful thing an evaluation can surface — agreement on accountability tracks with boards that are productive and low-conflict. BoardEval never averages a split away. It names each one as plain arithmetic and puts it on the meeting agenda.
Honest about what's known
Every item is tagged for how strong the evidence behind it is, and evidence-based domains are reported separately from ones resting on practitioner wisdom. There is no overall score, and nothing here claims to predict test results.
From a private answer to an adopted plan
Step 1
Check you're ready
Five questions before you start. No adopted student-outcome goals, or high conflict on the board? BoardEval says so, and recommends what to do first.
Step 2
Everyone answers privately
Nine domains, forty-five items, each rated by picking the sentence that describes what the board actually does. Autosaved, on any device, in about twenty-five minutes.
Step 3
See the real picture
Distributions rather than averages, the items the board is split on first, and any place the board rated itself highly with no evidence on file.
Step 4
Work it in a meeting
A generated debrief packet with timed agenda items, then two to four action steps with owners and dates — adopted by motion, checked at mid-year.
Nine domains, drawn from the research
Synthesized from the Iowa Lighthouse studies, the Center for Public Education’s Eight Characteristics, Waters & Marzano, Ford & Ihrke, and the frameworks used by state associations and Student Outcomes Focused Governance.
Items are written as behaviours you can check, not traits you can flatter. “Count the board’s last six meetings — how many carried a scheduled student-outcome monitoring item?” rather than “the board is data-driven.” Each one carries its source, so a member can see why they are being asked.
- 1Vision and student-outcome goals
- 2Monitoring and use of data
- 3Alignment of resources to goals
- 4Accountability and the policy / operations boundary
- 5Board and superintendent working relationship
- 6Board unity and focus
- 7Community engagement and trust
- 8Board culture, conduct and conflict
- 9Board learning and continuous improvement
And one number that isn’t an opinion
BoardEval tracks the share of open-meeting time your board spends on student outcomes — the one objective governance metric in wide use, scored against the Lone Star Governance bands. It also prints the criticism of that metric right next to the figure, because a board that optimises the number without changing what it discusses has gained nothing.
The other half of the evaluation year
Your board already evaluates the superintendent with SuptEval. BoardEval is the same discipline turned inward — and the governance research is consistent that a board holding its superintendent to account without ever examining its own contribution is only doing half the work.