Attorney General smacks Jefferson County Board of Education

– Says secret evaluation of superintendent violated Kentucky law

The Kentucky Attorney General’s office has issued an opinion regarding the recent secret evaluations of Jefferson County Public Schools superintendent Shelly Berman, which we commented on earlier here and here.

Says the A-G, Berman's secret evaluation violates Kentucky law.

For some compelling reasons why the local board of education, which publicly gave Berman a glowing report, might want to hide the superintendent’s evaluation, consider this performance information, which comes from an earlier blog.


Enrollment data on school membership from the Kentucky Department of Education shows there were 648,628 students in Kentucky’s public schools in the 2007-08 school year. In that year 93,941 students – just 14.5 percent – attended Jefferson County schools. Yet, as this graph shows, the district has a much higher proportion of schools in trouble both under No Child Left Behind and under the state's own assessment program.