Discover your readiness for participatory decision-making structures and transformational school change
Collaborative governance: structures and processes that distribute autonomy and decision-making power throughout a school, creating a more responsive and inclusive organization and learning environment.
What to expect: 10 questions about your school's current governance, meetings, and decision-making (takes about 10-15 minutes). Each question is scored 0-3 points based on readiness factors.
Optional context fields: Each question includes space to share specific details about your situation. Providing this additional context enables a customized written analysis option at the end of the assessment.
Created by Will Gowen at Be More Collaborative
Collaborative governance support for K-12 schools
Previous attempts at collaborative approaches - successful or not - provide valuable insight. Even failed experiments offer important learning about what your school community needs.
What's your experience with collaborative decision-making approaches?
Collaborative governance is culture change work that requires willingness to experiment, learn from mistakes, and adapt over time. It's not a quick fix but a sustained practice.
How does your school approach trying new things and learning from mistakes?
Authentic student participation in governance requires adults who have genuinely practiced collaborative decision-making themselves. You can't facilitate what you haven't experienced.
How important is authentic student participation in school decisions to your community?
Most schools have some stated values around collaboration, community, or student voice. When daily governance practices don't align with these values, it creates tension and undermines authentic culture.
How well do your governance practices align with your school's stated values?
The pattern: some schools have staff who feel powerless in workplace decisions while being asked to empower students. Others have created psychological safety where people feel safe to speak truth and take risks.
How engaged is your team in current decision-making and meeting processes?
Ineffective meetings are often the first sign that governance needs attention - they either become information dumps or unproductive complaint sessions that leave people frustrated.
How do people feel about your current team meetings?
Collaborative governance requires surfacing and working through disagreements constructively. Many schools either avoid conflict until it explodes or lack processes for productive disagreement.
How does your school handle disagreements and diverse perspectives?
Clear decision-making processes are foundational to collaborative governance. Confusion about who decides what creates bottlenecks and undermines shared authority.
How effectively do your current decision-making processes serve your school's needs?
Sustainable change requires realistic capacity assessment. Schools often fail when they attempt transformation without adequate time, energy, or financial resources to support the sustained practice and learning process.
How much time and resources could your team realistically dedicate to learning new governance practices?
Many leaders want to share power but face district pressure to maintain control, while others are open to collaboration but unsure how to redistribute authority effectively.
How willing is your leadership team to explore sharing decision-making power with staff?