The Bluegrass Institute recently submitted a records request to obtain the most recent (2009-2010) performance evaluation for former Jefferson County Public Schools superintendent Sheldon Berman. You can read/ download this evaluation here. This was a follow up to a previous request that was a part of the investigative report, "Rewarding Failure".
In that report we criticized the school board for providing a glowing review for Berman's performance while failing to even MENTION the incredible number of underperforming schools in the district. This time around it was at least mentioned...
Considering very few school boards across the state even mention student performance in superintendent evaluations, the fact that disappointment was expressed by the JCPS school board is a significant step forward. Granted, it is just a couple of sentences from a multi-page document but it does represent a willingness to bring this discussion into the open and an awareness that the superintendent is the CEO of the school district.
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It’s disappointing that the Jefferson County Board of Education does not understand that their school district is not a true “urban” district like all the other cities that took part in the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests.
Jefferson County is the only school district in the entire group that has over 50 percent white students in its school system. The next closest city has far fewer whites.
When you break the NAEP scores down by race, Jefferson County doesn’t have that much to crow about.
For example, reading proficiency rates for fourth grade whites in the district were five points lower than the overall average proficiency rate for whites in all large cities while the Jefferson County’s eighth grade students proficiency lagged whites in other cities by 8 percentage points (more on that here
http://bluegrasspolicy-blog.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-federal-test-results-show-jefferson.html).
Read still more about this deceptive situation here: http://bluegrasspolicy-blog.blogspot.com/2010/06/watch-out-jefferson-county.html and here: http://bluegrasspolicy-blog.blogspot.com/2010/05/overstating-jefferson-county.html and here http://bluegrasspolicy-blog.blogspot.com/search?q=urban+district.
Or, just enter the search term “urban district” in this blog’s search feature to see even more.
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