Driving with Dashboards

fro m th e b o a r d of tru stees

How does one easily explain the complexities of running a Pre-K-12 school, based on three different campuses, with one thousand students and a plethora of academic and co-curricular offerings, let alone gauge the effectiveness of the entire operation?

This question led to a remarkable collaboration between the MKA Board of Trustees and school administration, a collaboration that resulted in a new tool that provides Trustees with easily accessible information to assist them in productive governance.

“We used the analogy of our school being an incredibly complex machine,” explains Headmaster Tom Nammack, “and decided that we needed three or four indicators to give us an idea of how that machine is running.” These indicators took the form of data “dashboards”, and in late February, Nammack and Director of Curriculum and Professional Development Karen Newman, travelled to the National Association of Independent Schools Annual Conference in San Francisco to present a workshop on the creation of these dashboards, that included insights and perspectives from Trustee Eric Pai and President of the Board Alice Hirsh.

In an atmosphere of full cooperation and openness, the MKA Board of Trustees worked with administrators to identify the relevant metrics that would help them to assess trends and highlight

We u s e d th e a n a lo g y o f o u r s c h o o l b e in g an incredibly com plex machine, ”

e x p la in s H e a d m a s te r Tom N a m m a c k ...

outcomes in the areas of academics, athletics, enrollment and college admission. In the field of athletics, for example, the dashboard records numbers of boys’ and girls’ teams by grade * student participation by grade and gender, winning records, athletic citations and coaching honors, and finally, alumni participation in athletics at the college level.

Often viewed as being at the forefront of professional and curricular development, MKA is frequently invited to give national presentations on topics ranging from technology in the classroom to ethics in the curriculum, and innovation in the field o f Trustee governance can now be added to the list. As Nammack notes, “The use and evolution of these dashboards will continue to be a shared responsibility of the Board and administration, and are evidence of the positive partnership between Trustees and school leaders at MKA.”

Pictured above: Dashboard architects Alice Hirsh, Eric Pai ’79, Karen Newman and Tom Nammack.

review spring 2010