Superintendent Evaluations – Transparency vs. Effectiveness

Conflicting opinions over Senate Bill 178 from Commissioner Terry Holliday and UK Journalism professor Mike Farrell.

This from Doc H's Blog:

Early in my tenure in Kentucky, I was informed about an Attorney General’s opinion (08 OMD 165) that superintendent evaluations were required to be conducted in public. I asked –“You mean they are required to report the outcome of the evaluation in public?” I was told – “No, the actual evaluation must be conducted in public.”I can tell you that this was a new one on me.

Having been in education for 37 years, I certainly know that evaluations are very important and that privacy and confidentiality are crucial in the process of evaluation. Having served as a superintendent in two districts for more than 12 years, I have spent many mid-year and end-of-year evaluations having excellent discussions with school board members about personnel matters and other components of superintendent evaluation. The key to the evaluation was always a unified summative report that listed the positive elements of the evaluation and the areas for improvement.

While I am very supportive of transparency in conducting the public’s business, I believe that neither a school board nor a superintendent could possibly engage in a full and informative discussion of the components of an evaluation system during an open meeting...

The Senate Education Committee took a very important step this week in this matter, and Senate Bill 178, sponsored by Sen. David Givens, gained unanimous and bipartisan support. I hope the full Senate and the House will act to correct this situation prior to the end-of-year evaluations of superintendents.

In rebuttal, Mike Farrell wrote in the Herald-Leader:

Legislature wrong to close superintendent evaluations

In a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice William Brennan wrote this country has "a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials."

Kentucky legislators failed to honor that principle when they voted to allow elected
school board members to evaluate the performance of school superintendents in secret.

Kentucky taxpayers and our children can only hope that Gov. Steve Beshear, who has established a strong record on government openness and transparency, will veto the measure.

Senate Bill 178 will allow school board members to conduct performance evaluations of the superintendent behind closed doors. It is an appalling piece of legislation that works against good government, undermines transparency and strips away the rights of taxpayers who spend millions each year to provide children a quality education. This is the opposite of education reform.

What government service is more important than providing a quality education?

Is anything more important to Kentucky's future than ensuring that every public school system is doing the best job with the resources it has? And the person most responsible — who thus should be most accountable to the people paying the bills — is the local school superintendent...

The Courier-Journal reported that a school board member testified before the House Education Committee that the evaluation of a superintendent needed to be conducted in a closed meeting to allow for "frank, honest and sometimes painful" conversations.

"It's sometimes difficult to be totally honest in front of the press," she told the committee. That may be a legitimate argument in some situations, but it doesn't change the overriding principle that the public's business must be conducted in public, even if that means some government officials are not treated fairly in the process. Why would a public official be afraid to be "totally honest" in front of the people who elected her? ...

This bill will mean school board members and superintendents, and by extension public schools, are less accountable to voters who will be unable to judge their performance when it matters most.

Hurt feelings are not the enemy of good government. Lack of accountability is.

Kentuckians ought to be asking their state legislators why they are more concerned with protecting school board members and superintendents than watching out for the rights and interests of taxpayers.

When I retired from the principalship and decided I wanted to write, I audited a couple of journalism courses at UK. Mike Farrell taught an editorial writing class I took.

How 'speech' ruling hurts democracy

When I retired from public school administration I got the opportunity to teach - and to become a student again. I audited Jim Klotter's Kentucky History at Georgetown College. I also sat in on two journalism courses at UK; Buck Ryan's News Editing, and Opinion Writing taught by journalism veteran and newly minted Associated Professor Mike Farrell. Today the Courier-Journal ran Mike's Op-Ed on our precious First Amendment.
~

By Mike Farrell

Special to The Courier-Journal

The Supreme Court of the United States last month taught high school students a civics lesson.

The title was "The First Amendment guarantees less freedom for students than for adults."

...The First Amendment says nothing about maturity and doesn't mandate responsibility as a condition for enjoying freedom. Still, few who have taught or raised children want to see the public schools turned into a free speech zone where banners glorify drug use or student newspapers belittle teachers or fellow students.

Because this decision concerned speech that involved drug messages, it may do little damage to student speech. It may do greater damage to democracy.

A great deal is written, usually with great angst, about the lack of interest young people have in civics, public issues, voting and the news.

The Civic Literacy Initiative of Kentucky, led by Chief Justice Joseph Lambert and Secretary of State Trey Grayson, last year issued strong recommendations intended to re-engage students in our public life.

One way to do that is to encourage students to exercise their rights of free expression. The schools and the courts should consider whether this decision and other curbs on students' First Amendment rights are related to their lack of interest in public affairs. The percentage of young adults who vote in national elections is low.

A Kentuckian, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, wrote in 1927 "the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people" and "public discussion is a political duty." A generation that doesn't vote or keep up with national news is the foundation for an inert people.

The lesson students are taught by their schools and the Supreme Court is that they may be punished if their opinions are unpopular, even meaningless and silly. That can suggest to them that it is better not to form an opinion or at least not to express one...

... The First Amendment was never designed to protect popular opinion. It was designed to protect controversial speech. The First Amendment is not easy; it demands we let people speak and write even when we consider their ideas odious or silly, even if they are students. We should ask ourselves what we are teaching the leaders of tomorrow about freedom.