Scoring the superintendent

Bob Bonnar
NLJ Editor
 
The primary job of school boards is to hire and fire a superintendent for the district, lay out expectations and regularly evaluate the performance of their school leader based on those expectations, but boards in Wyoming will now be required to do so under a set of guidelines developed in Cheyenne.
The Weston County School District #1 Board of Trustees was informed by WCSD #1 Superintendent at their meeting on November 28 that the system they currently use to evaluate his performance each year will no longer pass muster as a result of bills passed by the Wyoming State Legislature that require districts to develop comprehensive evaluation systems for school leaders.
The evaluation system that was developed locally by LaCroix and the board, and used in the past, does not meet the criteria laid out in Wyoming Department of Education rules and regulations.
The district was informed that the current evaluation system was aligned with only three of the seven standards identified, and LaCroix informed the board that the district would probably have to purchase one of the three evaluation tools approved by the state to avoid repercussions.
“They’re really not worried about how you evaluate. They’re worried about the tool,” LaCroix told the board.
That didn’t sit well with at least one member of the board, who believed the state was encroaching on an area that is entirely under the purview of the governing body for the school district that is elected locally.
“I think it is ridiculous. They have nothing to do with hiring you or firing you. That’s the board’s responsibility,” John Riesland said.
Trustee Tom Wright indicated that he felt one of the three approved evaluation tools did not differ significantly from the one presently used by the district. LaCroix noted, however, that evaluations under any of the approved tools will have to place the emphasis on data — test scores — and he believes that the job of a superintendent, and schools in general, goes well beyond test performance.
Riesland agreed.
“I think it is important that we educate our children,” he said. “But the form doesn’t tell everything about what you do as the leader of this school district. It doesn’t tell everything the teacher does in that classroom.”
The state’s report card on the district’s current evaluation tool, however, indicates that the greatest areas of non-alignment are under the standards which focus largely on student achievement and test scores.
Under the state’s new rules, an approved evaluation tool must be aligned to the first standard, and must demonstrate alignment to the majority of elements defined in five of the six other identified standards. The current WCSD #1 evaluation tool was found to be in alignment with Standard 5: “Efficient and Effective Management,” Standard 6: “Ethics and Professionalism,” and Standard 7: “Communication and Community Engagement.”
Although the district was aligned with three of the four elements in Standard 4: “Vision, Mission, and Culture,” the state indicated WCSD #1 was not aligned to the standard as a whole because it failed to include the fourth element — use of data. The district was also dinged for only meeting three of the seven elements identified under Standard 3: “Developing and Supporting a Learning Organization.”
The largest discrepancies between the district’s current evaluation tool and those approved by the state were found in Standard 1: “Clear and Consistent Focus on Maximizing the Learning and Growth of All Students,” and Standard 2: “Instructional and Assessment Leadership,” and the non-alignment was largely in areas that require the evaluation to refer to test data or curriculum alignment.
Riesland, who has served on the board for nearly three decades, is frustrated because he believes the state’s effort to dictate how a board evaluates its superintendent is another in a continuing line of steps taken by the legislature in recent years that are designed to wrest control of local schools away from communities and the boards they elect.
“When I was elected to this board, we had some local control,” Riesland said. “I think that is one of the responsibilities of this board is to evaluate the superintendent, and it doesn’t matter which form we use as long as it is fair. We have nine (board) members here and we have one job to do, and that is evaluate the superintendent, and (now) Cheyenne tells us what form to use? That isn’t local control.”
Districts are still allowed to create their own evaluation tools, but they are subject to rejection if they don’t meet criteria.
“We can make our own, but then we have to get approval from the State Board,” Wright explained.
LaCroix agreed with Riesland’s assertion that the rejection of the district’s current evaluation system is another erosion of local control, but expressed confidence that he and the board would be able to produce positive results for students and schools regardless of the evaluation tool that is being used.
“The evaluation is really about a critical conversation, and I think the conversations can still happen,” LaCroix reasoned.
The board will now have until February 1 to notify the Wyoming Department of Education and the State Board of Education that they will be using state defined standards, or that they will identify local standards and ensure they are aligned with state standards, in which case additional information will have to be submitted by a June 1, 2019, deadline.