McCreary Superintendent evaluation includes student achievement

The most recent performance evaluation of the McCreary County Public Schools superintendent includes a section devoted to "student achievement". This is huge step forward with regards to holding district leadership accountable for poor performance.

In the 2010 evaluation, there is no such mention. You can view the 2011 evaluation here. Both of these evaluations were obtained via the Kentucky Open Records Act. If you look closely on the "Student Achievement & Learning" page, you will notice there is an asterisk with the title. At the bottom of the page you will see that this section of the evaluation was recommended by "education support groups". Yes! yes it was!

Rewarding superintendents while the students in their district suffer through underperformance is an issue that has been plaguing Kentucky for quite sometime. For full analysis of this issue, be sure to check out Rewarding Failure: The rubber-stamping of Kentucky superintendent evaluations.

JCPS school board admits disappointment in superintendent evaluation

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.

Superintendent performance questions in other states

An excellent South Carolina based transparency site has been asking some great questions about whether school superintendents are "earning their keep". The premise of the post is that the highest paid superintendents' districts are performing mediocre at best.

The Bluegrass Institute has been monitoring this very issue in Kentucky for a while now. You can read about our efforts here. It is great to see accountability and transparency on superintendent evaluations spreading in other states!

'Rewarding Failure' on #FOIAchat

I will be discussing education open records requests and "Rewarding Failure" on FOIAchat this afternoon. FOIAchat takes place each Friday, 2pm EST on Twitter as a way for transparency advocates across the nation to share stories and best practices for open records.

You can follow me on twitter @LoganBIPPS and the hashtag for the conversation is #FOIAchat.

Open Records: Jefferson County Schools, Berman performance evaluation

An open records request was sent today to obtain the most recent performance evaluation for outgoing Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) superintendent Sheldon Berman.

JCPS and Berman were part of the investigative report "Rewarding Failure" which shed light on the broken process of evaluating the performance of school district leaders. With this records request, the Bluegrass Institute is following up to see if there has been any progress!

You can track the request progress here!

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 the SPARSE Knox Co. superintendent evaluation

Knox County Schools has been exemplary in its efforts to fill our open records requests. This week, they maintained that form and filled a request to obtain the most recent superintendent performance evaluation.

You may remember that superintendent Walter Hulett received a PERFECT score this year.

We wanted to see for ourselves what the evaluation looked like and now, you can too.

View the evaluation.

Honestly, it seems odd that the superintendent received a perfect score and that there were not any comments left about his performance. Is this really the type of accountability we want in our education system?


Knox County Public Schools were one of four schools profiled in "Rewarding Failure"

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?

Double-checking 'perfect'

We wrote yesterday about how the Campbellsville Independent School Board turned in a perfect score evaluation for their superintendent.

Today, we submitted an open records request to obtain a copy of the performance evaluation along with the criteria the board uses for evaluation.  You can monitor the progress of the request here.

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.

Knox County superintendent's perfect score?

It is that time of year again when school boards begin to evaluate their districts' superintendents.

Knox County Public Schools has already been at work and turned in an evaluation that boasts a perfect score (72 out of 72 possible points) for superintendent Walter Hulett. That's a pretty good score. You can only score higher if your teacher offers extra credit.

Earlier in the year we profiled Hulett's performance evaluation in "Rewarding Failure". In our assessment, the evaluation was a bunch of fluff that praised the CEO of the district despite the horrid performance of the schools in Knox County.

Stay posted for more information. In the coming days we will obtain this recent performance evaluation and uncover recent performance data for Knox County.

Rewarding failure: Fayette County Public Schools

Fayette County is Kentucky's second-largest school district. Yet despite the district's proven inability to meet even the most watered-down standards of No Child Left Behind, its superintendent received nothing but positive feedback during the evaluation.

Click here to read the article.

Superintendent reviews changing?

This year's round of superintendent reviews is starting to appear and some districts seem to be providing a bit more scrutiny than they have in the past.

Last year, Franklin County Schools' superintendent Harrie Buecker received a fairly glowing review from the local school board. You can view that evaluation here. That evaluation did not give much attention to student, school, or district performance.

This year, while still a positive review, superintendent Buecker received some feedback that was a bit more stern than last year. One board member commented:

“I think the code of ethics and the personal integrity leaves a lot to be desired"

This type of feedback for a superintendent was almost non-existent when the Bluegrass Institute reviewed the superintendent evaluation process last year in "Rewarding Failure". While it is desirable to have more discussion on student achievement and progress toward specific and measurable goals, could this be a step in the direction of applying more accountability the CEO's of our school districts?

Newport Independent Schools in 'Rewarding Failure' video

Given recent events with Newport Independent Schools I thought it would be worth it to post this video again...



Newport Independent Schools was one of four districts profiled in Rewarding Failure: The rubber- stamping of Kentucky superintendent evaluations.

Newport Independent superintendent steps down

Recently Newport Independent Schools made some waves with a leadership assessment report that concluded:

"The dysfunctional relationship among the local school board, superintendent, high school staff, school council and union is impeding the district's ability to meet the needs of the students."

This week, the superintendent stepped down.

Newport Independent Schools was one of four districts profiled in the Bluegrass Institute's "Rewarding Failure" commentary that outlined how superintendents are not being held accountable for results. The commentary features copies of the actual performance reviews of superintendents.

Check it out here!

'Rewarding Failure', 'Operation: Open Records' are not baloney

In case you missed it, Kentucky's governor thinks the work of the Bluegrass Institute is baloney...

Gov. Beshear calls BIPPS baloney by Bluegrass Institute

• "Rewarding Failure" is a report released by the Bluegrass Institute earlier this year talking about the lack of accountability in the performance evaluations of Kentucky's school district superintendents.  It was based on the results of open records requests and features actual copies of performance evaluations of superintendents.
• "Operation: Open Records 2011" is a project that led to many records requests.  The requests were tracked on FreedomKentucky.org.  Here you can view the requests made to the governor's office.  

A lack of accountability when it comes to children's education, claiming that leadership is successful despite the academic failure of the district, the denial of open records requests by the governor's office...

...you decide what the real baloney is!

Fact Check: Instructional Leadership?

This is an excerpt from the 2009-2010 Knox County Public Schools superintendent performance evaluation:

A 6.0 is a perfect cumulative score on the evaluation meaning every school board member rated the superintendent at this score.

Do these test scores reflect a perfect 6.0?

% of students meeting ACT benchmark scores in 2009-10

The fact is these percentages don't reflect instructional leadership.

Bluegrass Bullet: Rewarding Failure

The Bluegrass Institute's recent commentary "Rewarding Failure" took a look at how many superintendent evaluations in Kentucky are rubber-stamped and essentially meaningless.  You can read the full report here.

JCPS wants input on new superintendent

With superintendent Sheldon Berman on the way out, Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) is on the hunt for a new superintendent.  The district is looking for input on what the public would want to see in their superintendent.

One piece of advice I might give is look for a superintendent who will be evaluated based on performance, metrics, and specific goals.  So often this is not the case.

JCPS will have a survey available at the beginning of the week on their site.

Education commissioner says more about BIPPS interest area: Weak school superintendent evaluations

Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday adds more ideas about the rating of superintendents – and other education staff – in his latest blog.

The commissioner says:

“As I travel the state, most administrators tell me that we need to address this broken process.”

The commissioner also admits:

“In Kentucky, we have 174 different versions of principal, teacher and superintendent evaluations.”

The commissioner’s blog additionally contains links to several interesting resources that can help local school boards improve their rating systems.

Without doubt, the system now in use for superintendent evaluations is badly broken, as the Bluegrass Institute’s recent report, “Rewarding Failure,” clearly shows. Many current evaluations lack any sort of meaningful metrics of performance. Most are just ‘rubber stamps’ to ratify whatever the superintendent is currently doing while totally ignoring student performance all together.

Few evaluations, if any, contain enough material to justify pay increases and continued employment.

Click here to read the Bluegrass Institute’s superintendent eval expose, “Rewarding Failure.”

Check here for the latest updates on all the other Open Records issues!