The Opportunity of Superintendent Evaluation

BOARD-SAVVY SUPERINTENDENT

A Washington school district superintendent told me that once a year, for five years, his school board members provided a thumbs-up to suggest they approved of his performance. That was their annual superintendent evaluation.

After accepting a new position in another district, he called me to ask how he could improve this practice in his new district. That began my 17-year quest to improve the value, objectivity and fairness of superintendent evaluation.

As with any good governance practice, it begins with a plan. Performance evaluation is more of an art than a science. There is no end to available evaluation instruments. Your board may be frustrated with the one they used last year and/or the one they plan to use this year. Rarely is that frustration as much to do with the instrument as it is to the fact that boards rarely know how to evaluate performance. As one school board member in Texas said, “The problem with superintendent evaluation is us.”