One of the State Board of Education's (SBE) strategic plan goals is to advocate for an effective, accountable governance structure for public education in Washington. The development of this goal comes from Board members' experiences over the last five years to understand and address the complexity of Washington's education system and their role in it. The Board has been engaged in many projects, including the successful work in accountability and new high school graduation requirements. Other projects have caused the Board to pause and reflect about its role as well as that of other agencies in areas such as systems planning. Several of those projects are examined through case studies in this paper. This paper is organized into the following sections: (1) What is Washington Trying to Achieve?; (2) Governance: a Definition, Literature Review, and Analytical Framework; (3) Education Governance in Washington and Other States; (4) Washington's History of Education Reform Efforts in K-12; (5) Washington Case Studies on Governance; and (6) International Education Systems Governance and How They Compare to the U.S. (Contains 20 resources and 37 footnotes.)