[LCSD] The Superintendent's Evaluation Process

I want to try and address in a more coherent way how the Superintendent's evaluation process (which was touched on in the and DH and Express stories) looks from the public eye, or at least a public perspective.

My understanding of the normal process is that every year, the board sits down and evaluates the super in five areas, giving him a score of 0-4 in each category. The evaluation covers the previous year.

Then the board sits down with the superintendent and explains (one might say 'justifies' if one is not feeling particularly charitable, and I am not) the evaluation and starts to plan the next year in light of it. The overall results of the evaluation are also made public.

It's also my understanding that this evaluation process is set into the super's contract. (Which is not online – will someone over at the D.O please take care of that? There's no justification for putting both the licensed and classified CBAs up there but not the administrator contracts.)

That's the formal outline of the thing. But it's a shell – it only gains meaning when it's taken seriously. and imbued with relevant content. From where I'm sitting, it sure looks like the Terrible Trio did not take the evaluation process seriously.

If the goal is to improve the district, then an evaluation is useful when it's constructive. It's constructive when it points to specific events and actions and decisions, identifies the fault with them, and proposes solutions. I don't consider canning the Superintendent after a single year's bad review a reasonable solution - would you like that standard applied to you?

As far as I can tell, this is what happened here:

1. Rick has previously announced his intent to see Robinson gone. I suspect it has also long been Josh's intent to see Robinson gone. Shimmin, I think, had not decided by the time she ran for the board. Certainly, however, all three decided before the evaluation process actually occurred what she thought the outcome should be, which makes it much harder to take their evaluation seriously – I no longer trust that they were being honest or fair. It destroys the credibility of the evaluator to telegraph the results before the process even takes place.

2. One or more board members took into account things that happened more than a year ago. I'm not sure how legal this is, but it certainly violates the spirit of the evaluation. I wonder if it's OK for the board to evaluate Robinson multiple times for the same thing? It certainly isn't fair – note that one cannot be tried twice for the same crime under U.S. law, and for good reason.

As a result of the above, the evaluation process almost certainly did not include either a) the requisite level of specificity necessary to justify such low scores or b) meaningful constructive criticism.

Given those two lacks, I wouldn't have any interest in taking this evaluation seriously; the process has long been compromised.

What does that mean?

It means that even if Robinson is a total f*ck-up, the board has nowhere credible left to stand to make that claim.

That's why I harp on process so much; it is foundational to credibility, which cannot and should not flow merely from the position one takes on issues, but on the use of evidence and logic that one uses to get there.

Blah blah blah small town yeah yeah whatever: If we concede that because it's a small town things like logic, reason and evidence shouldn't be expected, then we're in worse shape than I thought. There's a strain of elitism in there that will only poison the discourse.

The bottom line: Even if you like the result and want Robinson gone, it should scare the bejesus out of you that this is how it's going down. It's a bad precedent to set, period.

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. The world's more complicated than that.