Cheating our kids: poor performance = pay increase?

If your child's school district had only 11.6% of 11th grade students meeting the benchmark ACT score for math in 2008 and an embarrassing 9.2% in 2009, would say say there is work to do? With scores not much more impressive in other subjects would you say the superintendent deserved a perfect score on their performance evaluation?

Well, this is the case in Carter County Public Schools. Below are graphs indicating the percentage of 11th grade students meeting the ACT benchmark score in various subjects. The numbers are not flattering.

Despite these numbers, superintendent Darlene Gee was given rave reviews on her evaluations with ZERO mention of student performance. These evaluations were accompanied by salary increases. Significant increases...

Take a look at the evaluation for yourself...

2009 evaluation

2010 evaluation

This amounts to rewarding failure. Student performance is poor while the leader of the district continues to receive significant pay increases? How does that work?

View Carter County's 2010 superintendent evaluation

We recently submitted an open records request to obtain the 2009-2010 evaluation for Carter County Public Schools superintendent Darlene Gee.

You can view/download this evaluation here.

Just as with last year, there is virtually no mention of individual school performance, specific metrics, or goals. Gee "meets" expectations in all categories. The only comment from the evaluator is in the image below:

Does this evaluation reflect the type of accountability we want to see from those responsible for our children's education?

Knox, Carter County schools records requests

Today, records requests were submitted to Knox and Carter County Schools to obtain the most recent performance evaluations for their superintendents. Both of these school districts were featured in our investigative report "Rewarding Failure: The rubber-stamping of Kentucky's superintendent performance evaluations."

We will be following up the the four districts we profiled to see how this year's evaluations compare with last.

We already know that the Knox County Schools superintendent has received a perfect score this years evaluation...details to come.

Rewarding failure in Carter County Schools

Read the full "Rewarding Failure" commentary here.

"Rewarding Failure" is a recently published commentary by The Bluegrass Institute based on superintendent evaluations obtained via the Kentucky Open Records Act.

One of the districts profiled is Carter County Public Schools, a district that, at the time of the requested superintendent evaluation in 2009, had:

• failed meet even the watered-down goals of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) for eight consecutive years
• five of 10 schools not meeting the basic NCLB goals
• and only 9.2% of 11th graders meeting the ACT benchmark for math

raved about the performance of their superintendent.  In fact, the evaluator commented that the superintendent was:

"doing a good job like the fact you attend so many school function and visit classrooms...."

It seems like the superintendent of a school district should be more concerned with student achievement.  The leader of the school district should be held to high standards, evaluated based on specific goals outlined by quantifiable metrics, and held accountable when even the most basic standards for student learning can not be met.

You can view the actual performance evaluation for Carter County School along with three other districts here.