Persistently Low-Achieving Knight Middle school recommended for principal, SBDM change

Superintendent Sheldon Berman clueless

The latest audit of a Persistently Low-Achieving School is out. This time the Knight Middle School from Jefferson County is in the spotlight, and the glare is pretty harsh. A few comments from the Audit:

• “The principal and school council have not demonstrated leadership that provides guidance and engages stakeholders within the school to meet challenges of struggling students in reading and math that address goals of No Child Left Behind.”

• “The principal has not ensured that teachers deliver student centered, rigorous, and differentiated instruction that meets the learning needs of all students.”

• “The principal has not fostered a culture of mutual respect between all staff members and students.” (My added comment: this is a guaranteed recipe for student failure. It fosters student violence and staff apathy)

• “The principal and school council have not established an organizational structure that promotes high student achievement and staff performance.”

• “The principal has not held all staff members accountable for their roles in improving student academic and behavioral performances to sustain continuous improvement.”

• “The principal has not engaged all stakeholders in decision making to develop a common ownership in the success of all students.”

As recently happened with the audit for Newport High School in Newport Kentucky the audit team is recommending that both the school’s principal and School Based Decision Making (SBDM) authority at the school need to be transferred. Given the comments above, the auditors really had no other choice.

Now, here’s the really sad part. Jefferson County Schools superintendent Sheldon Berman told the Courier-Journal:

“I was surprised at the deficiencies in how negative the audit was about leadership.”

Surprised? How can that possibly be?

Clearly, either the audit is totally fouled up, or Berman has not been paying attention.

Berman, of course, is on the way out. If the Jefferson County Board of Education wants to do the right thing in hiring his replacement, they need to spend some time looking over the audits for their Low-Achieving Schools. In fact, the board might want to invite members of the audit team to brief on what good schools look like. That way, the board can ask intelligent questions of the new superintendent applicants to see if those applicants know what a good school really looks like and how to not be surprised when a school isn’t measuring up.

More on the highly paid, low performing leadership at Newport Independent Schools

District lacks capability/capacity to turn high school around

Talk about a school district in chaos! Check this comment!

“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.”

Quote from: Newport Independent District Leadership Assessment Report dated 04/24/2011 to 04/29/2011


Newport High School was recently declared one of Kentucky’s ‘Persistently Low-Achieving Schools.’ That means both the school and the district required leadership audits.

The resulting “Newport Independent District Leadership Assessment Report” dated 04/24/2011 to 04/29/2011, is now available on line.

Aside from the quote above, there is much cause for concern about how this district has been managed by Superintendent Michael Brandt, whose 2010-11 salary of $174,344.34 ranks him the seventh highest paid superintendent among Kentucky’s 174 school districts.

Out of 88 ‘Indicators for School Improvement’ examined by the audit team, the report cites a large number of areas, over 80 of them, where the district either has made only limited development/implementation of education reforms or essentially has yet to start the process at all.

Worst of all, the report says:

“District leadership does not have the capability and capacity to manage the intervention of Newport High School.”

It’s got to be time for a management change when the leadership can’t cope with its responsibilities with its high school.

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