Board Evaluation Instrument
At the last Board meeting, the Board introduced a motion to approve and adopt Board and Superintendent Evaluation Instruments.
I will discuss the Superintendent Evaluation Instrument later. Today, I have to point out how completely horrible, inadequate, inappropriate, and misguided the Board Evaluation Instrument is.
The Instrument keys off of the Board's Affirmation of Responsibility, which is, itself, a horrible, inadequate, inappropriate, and misguded document.
Here's the fundamental problem with both of them: they don't address the Board's job. What are the Board's functions, duties and responsibilities?
1) The Board is - first and foremost - a policymaking body. Yet there is nothing in this Evaluation Instrument that asks if the Board is fulfilling that function. The sad answer is that they are not doing a good job of setting Policy. Where is our Student Assignment Policy? The Board is very late with it. The Board has not made much progress on the huge backlog of policies that need to be updated. In large part because the Student Learning Committee has only met twice since this Board was seated. The Board is failing in this task.
Part of making Policy, as I frequently point out, is enforcing Policy. This Board has not done anything to enforce Policy. There are a number of Policies that are regularly violated without mention. The ones on promotion and non-promotion leap to mind. There is good reason to believe that the administration of Special Education programs may be in violation of Policy, if only because it may be in violation of the law.
2) The Board is supposed to supervise the Superintendent. The evaluation instrument and the affirmation of responsibility creates the illusion that the Superintendent leads the Board or that they have a peer relationship. They don't. The relationship is supposed to be hierarchical and the Board is supposed to be on top. This Board follows the Superintendent rather than leading her. The Board is failing in this task.
3) The Board is supposed to adopt curricula. Unfortunately this Board has not done so. They are very late with a high school math curriculum. There is some question as to whether the changes in the State K-8 Math Standards doesn't require a corresponding change in our K-8 math curriculum, but the Board hasn't even opened the topic. Who knows where we stand on Reading, Writing, and Science? Despite having adopted a P.E. curriculum, the Board is failing in this task.
4) The Board is supposed to require and consider periodic reports on educational programs including annual reports on school district programs. They haven't asked for any reports and, so far as I can tell, they haven't considered any.
5) The Board is supposed to require and approve effective plans for maintenance and operation of school properties. For all of the time the Board has spent on property management, I can't say that they have any effective plan.
6) The Board, like all other District staff, should have a community engagement element in their performance review. How well has the Board welcomed, considered, and responded to public input? I would say not very well at all. The Board gets public input at every meeting through public testimony, but they do not respond to it and there is no evidence that they even consider it. How well do individual Board members do with public engagement? Two of them, Directors Bass and Martin-Morris, do extremely well. They meet regularly with the community, they respond to emails and phone calls, and they act on the input they receive. The next tier down, Directors DeBell and Sundquist, do some of those things some of the time. Then there are Directors Chow, Maier, and Carr who don't do those things at all.
7) Finally, is the Board getting evaluated as a single entity or will each Board member be evaluated individually? It's important because accountability is strictly personal. Shared accountability is no accountability.
The Affirmation of Responsibility provides a very poor measure of the Board. A better measure would be a similar checklist based on Policy B61.00.
I do not, however, expect this Board to judge themselves by that Standard because they know how poorly they would rate. Instead, they will judge themselves by the Affirmation they wrote for themselves which does not measure their effectiveness at all. That is, of course, the final fatal flaw in this design: no one can hold themselves accountable. Accountability requires external enforcement.
I will discuss the Superintendent Evaluation Instrument later. Today, I have to point out how completely horrible, inadequate, inappropriate, and misguided the Board Evaluation Instrument is.
The Instrument keys off of the Board's Affirmation of Responsibility, which is, itself, a horrible, inadequate, inappropriate, and misguded document.
Here's the fundamental problem with both of them: they don't address the Board's job. What are the Board's functions, duties and responsibilities?
1) The Board is - first and foremost - a policymaking body. Yet there is nothing in this Evaluation Instrument that asks if the Board is fulfilling that function. The sad answer is that they are not doing a good job of setting Policy. Where is our Student Assignment Policy? The Board is very late with it. The Board has not made much progress on the huge backlog of policies that need to be updated. In large part because the Student Learning Committee has only met twice since this Board was seated. The Board is failing in this task.
Part of making Policy, as I frequently point out, is enforcing Policy. This Board has not done anything to enforce Policy. There are a number of Policies that are regularly violated without mention. The ones on promotion and non-promotion leap to mind. There is good reason to believe that the administration of Special Education programs may be in violation of Policy, if only because it may be in violation of the law.
2) The Board is supposed to supervise the Superintendent. The evaluation instrument and the affirmation of responsibility creates the illusion that the Superintendent leads the Board or that they have a peer relationship. They don't. The relationship is supposed to be hierarchical and the Board is supposed to be on top. This Board follows the Superintendent rather than leading her. The Board is failing in this task.
3) The Board is supposed to adopt curricula. Unfortunately this Board has not done so. They are very late with a high school math curriculum. There is some question as to whether the changes in the State K-8 Math Standards doesn't require a corresponding change in our K-8 math curriculum, but the Board hasn't even opened the topic. Who knows where we stand on Reading, Writing, and Science? Despite having adopted a P.E. curriculum, the Board is failing in this task.
4) The Board is supposed to require and consider periodic reports on educational programs including annual reports on school district programs. They haven't asked for any reports and, so far as I can tell, they haven't considered any.
5) The Board is supposed to require and approve effective plans for maintenance and operation of school properties. For all of the time the Board has spent on property management, I can't say that they have any effective plan.
6) The Board, like all other District staff, should have a community engagement element in their performance review. How well has the Board welcomed, considered, and responded to public input? I would say not very well at all. The Board gets public input at every meeting through public testimony, but they do not respond to it and there is no evidence that they even consider it. How well do individual Board members do with public engagement? Two of them, Directors Bass and Martin-Morris, do extremely well. They meet regularly with the community, they respond to emails and phone calls, and they act on the input they receive. The next tier down, Directors DeBell and Sundquist, do some of those things some of the time. Then there are Directors Chow, Maier, and Carr who don't do those things at all.
7) Finally, is the Board getting evaluated as a single entity or will each Board member be evaluated individually? It's important because accountability is strictly personal. Shared accountability is no accountability.
The Affirmation of Responsibility provides a very poor measure of the Board. A better measure would be a similar checklist based on Policy B61.00.
I do not, however, expect this Board to judge themselves by that Standard because they know how poorly they would rate. Instead, they will judge themselves by the Affirmation they wrote for themselves which does not measure their effectiveness at all. That is, of course, the final fatal flaw in this design: no one can hold themselves accountable. Accountability requires external enforcement.
Comments
You don't understand, our poor School Board needs to affirm each other, to actually do an evaluation that means there would be negative input would violate the affirmation process. Our School Board only affirms themselves.
Oh, and original ideas, where there is no parrot involved seems to escape the imagination, thus the reason for their evaluation and affirmation documents being the same.
I agree the Policy B61.00 is a better guide to what is suppose to be happening, unfortunately as you point out, you can't be evaluated on something your not doing.
And fire the Superintendent.
"We're here to serve all children, and so certainly continuing focus on the achievement gap is absolutely appropriate and an imperative," said board member Sherry Carr, who replaced Darlene Flynn in her Green Lake-area district. "But it's also appropriate that we address some of the other issues that have kind of been left unaddressed for a number of years."
From Harium (who I think has done a great job so far): "I understand that people have concerns about the middle getting squashed because we spend so much time on the kids who are underprepared, and the gifted kids. The kids in the middle, you know, no one talks about them," he said. "We need to be making ourselves attractive to people so we don't suffer the consequences of falling enrollment."
And this..."All families could benefit from some of the things the board is considering, said School Board member Michael DeBell. For example, the board is looking for ways to add more Montessori programs and replicate foreign-language-immersion programs like the one at John Stanford International School."
"At the new board's first meeting at the beginning of December, DeBell said the district needs to try to win back some students who are enrolled in private school.
"I don't think the district has really taken seriously the idea that we need to compete with private schools," he said in an interview. "I would like to think that we can continue to offer music, art, physical exercise and those kind of things at every school and still raise WASL scores."
It was just funny (sadly, not ha-ha funny) to stumble across these quotes in light of current capacity discussions/decisions.
You can link to the article these quotes came from via:
http://tinyurl.com/49ax5d