Today, a divided board of education voted 7-2 to seek similar authority for the Commissioner.
A divided Kentucky Board of Education approved an item on their legislative agenda that, if approved by the General Assembly, would grant the Commissionser authority to remove a school superintendent or school board member because after six years of repeated poor academic performance.
Not everyone agreed.
This from Toni at C-J:
...The board voted 10-0 (with board member C.B. Akins absent) to approve most of the wish-list items, but pulled out a recommendation from the Blue Ribbon Panel on interventions in low-performing schools, which asked to add chronic low student academic performance as a cause of removal of a superintendent or school board member.
The recommendation, if approved by the General Assembly, would change the language of KRS 156.132 to give the education commissioner authority to remove a school superintendent or school board member because after six years of repeated poor academic performance.
The item passed 7-3, but not before a divided discussion between board members.
Commissioner Jon Draud said the recommendation is needed as a way "to send a message" to superintendents across the state that "academic performance" is as
important as ground for removal as fiscal irresponsibility or the other areas
currently listed in the statue...
4 comments:
Richard, please expand on the ability of superintendents to fire principals.
About a year or so ago, the Kentucky Board of Education debated taking the site base council authority from schools in Covington and Louisville. They gave that authority to the superintendents rather than a Highly Skilled Educator.
The logic behind that decision was that giving the superintendents control was acceptable because the superintendents really could not be held accountable for poor performance in the schools. The reasoning was the overriding power of the site base councils under KERA meant that the superintendents had no authority to control key school operations such as setting curriculum and deciding exactly how funds would be spent. The board never discussed the concept that the superintendents did have responsibility for these low performing schools because of the ability to remove the schools’ leaders. According to the decision at the time, the superintendents really had no ability to cause change in a school unless the site base authority was removed from the school council. Obviously, the local elected board members had even less authority, as well.
Now, this new board legislative request takes aim at superintendents and local board members with low performing students. But, how can this really help much, unless the stipulation is added that the superintendent must hold site base control for six years, first? That stipulation was most definitely not discussed in the relevant Staff Note for the Board’s meeting nor in discussions during the meeting (I attended).
Can you or one of your readers tell me where a superintendent’s power to remove a principal is defined in the law? Also, if a principal is removed, what is the process to select a new principal? Does the school site base council get to do this (which could just perpetuate a problem), or in this unusual circumstance does the superintendent select the replacement? Furthermore, if this new legislative request makes sense, then the actions taken in Louisville and Covington to remove site base council authority and place it in the hands of superintendents definitely does not make sense.
Finally, there has been a lot of resistance to the idea that individual teachers should be held accountable for poor performance under CATS. Given the many problems with the assessment, I think there is a case to be made on that. However, the proposed legislation would hold superintendents and school board members accountable for the very same CATS results. Does anyone besides me see the grossly unfair inconsistency in that?
Not fire...
Demote.
Prior to KERA, principals enjoyed administrative tenure and could not be removed from their positions except for cause. Principals retain teacher tenure, but if a superintendent is willing to demote one to a 3rd grade classroom, they are relatively unencumbered.
Councils hire the replacement.
This is not about fairness.
See David Koretz's "Leo Problem" and it becomes fairly clear that we are talking about assessment systems that vary in their degree of unfairness.
Principals and teachers complain that they can't control for poverty and other powerful variables that contribute to low test scores. Superintendents complaint about school councils. Both are right.
I'm not suggesting that this is a good system. I'm just saying that if it's OK to remove principals for poor student performance - the same ought to apply to superintendents.
It's not fair. It is equitable.
Richard,
First, a point of clarification. You wrote, “See David Koretz's "Leo Problem" and it becomes fairly clear that we are talking about assessment systems that vary in their degree of unfairness.”
I think you are actually talking about Harvard Professor Daniel Koretz and his book “Measuring Up,” where he talks about the “Leo Effect.”
I find Koretz a very worthwhile read, and his performance as a member of the Kentucky OEA Panel in 1995 was outstanding. But, he does not get everything right in this book. Although Koretz missed it, as you read his account of the “Leo Effect” on pages 170-171, the real issue is that a school allowed a thoroughly disruptive child to impact the performance of his entire class every year he was in school. The fairness of testing actually was not the issue. In fact, the tests appear to have correctly identified the impact of this student’s disruptiveness on his entire class rather well. The test results, properly analyzed, identified the fact that the school failed to address this situation, placing the education of lots of kids at risk in the process.
I am disappointed as well with the argument that fairness doesn’t count so long as every educator is gutted equitably. I really hope you don’t believe that. Please explain how that makes education better for children.
By the way, I am told that even if superintendents are removed after six years, that they also have earned teacher tenure by that time and cannot be fired. If so, the proposal from the state board looks even more ill-conceived. Now we will saddle local boards with both removed principals and removed superintendents, and both will stay on the payroll despite poor performance. That’s a high stakes system alright – for the kids and individual teachers who have to endure the results of such nonsense.
Daniel...yes.
It's not about measuring Leo's impact. There are lots of Leos.
As Koretz told Michael F. Shaughnessy at EducationNews.org, "Leo might have been unusual, but the problem ... is not. The performance of small groups of students—certainly, one class, but even the within-grade enrollment for entire schools if they are not very large—is highly unstable from year to year because of essentially random differences between successive cohorts of kids.This variation will be found even if the quality of teaching is constant...Even if no children in the class are disruptive, there will be "good crops and bad crops," as one teacher put it.Some cohorts perform better than others, even in the absence of disruptive students."
As for my glib comments on fairness and equity - I'm actually in favor of both. But that's not the current circumstance.
Holding principals responsible for closing achievment gaps is not fair - because they do not control many of the critical variables - but it is essential. Lack of accountability produces mediocre results. Think 1980s.
Imagine that you were held responsible for achieving certain key goals that the Bluegrass Institute thought to be critical. ...Say, for the sake of argument, the passage of Senate Bill 1 in the last session.
You did your research. You wrote your papers. You proffered arguments in support of the initiative.
Should you have been demoted when the bill failed to be enacted?
Would that have been fair?
I think we can agree that it would not have been fair. But if you were held to that standard, would it not also be equitable to hold your boss to the same standard?
No matter....we aren't going to have ex-superintendents hanging around the district office. On the off chance a bill passes, it will take 6 years to implement its effects. By that time, we're past 2014 and all bets are off.
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