Superintendent Binienda's midcycle review 2019-20

Let me just say first of all that the timing on this doesn't make a lot of sense: superintendents are to be reviewed (unless they've agree upon the DESE pilot) on an annual basis. The superintendent last had a full evaluation in December of 2018. Nothing then happened until she proposed new goals in July--yes, six months later. This, again in December, we're told is her midcycle review, though it is early for that--half the year from the goals being set would be January--and right on schedule for the annual full evaluation, a year after her last one.
Evaluation is the School Committee's job. The schedule should be set as the goals are.

As I mentioned in the July post on the goals, the goals themselves are problematic in several ways:

• they largely don't focus on the biggest problems in the system, and, where they do, the response is not a systemic one. 
• they are goals that in many cases are lists of "stuff we'll do" rather than the change that doing those things will make
• they're scattershot, aligned neither with much of the data we've received, nor of the strategic plan

The School Committee did not exercise its authority to alter, amend, or change the goals, and so the goals as proposed are what we have. As a result the report (a PowerPoint which auto-downloads) is, as expected, largely a list of "stuff we did." Progress by and large is not about students but about staff going through trainings (most of which seem to involve new acronyms, as a side note). 

Impact on student learning and student experience in schools is really difficult to find in this report, and the few places we do find it, it appears in charts of a new round of standardized testing.

In terms of the performance in the four standards of the superintendency--instructional leadership, management and operations, family and community engagement, and professional culture--the marks of 'proficient' and 'exemplary' are given without any supporting documentation. 

The 'exemplary' marks--which, as I've noted in the past, should be particularly scrutinized as they are to be rare--are in:

• understanding and complying with laws, mandates, policies, collective bargaining agreements, and ethical guidelines
• addressing community concerns in an equitable, effective, and efficient manner
• fostering a shared commitment to high standards of service, teaching, and learning with high expectations of achievement for all
• demonstrates strong interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills

Right. So. 

This is the first time I will type this here, but this is a thing that is going to happen now: I will be evaluating the superintendent on these goals as they stand unless the School Committee chooses to change them at the midcycle review on Thursday.

As such, rather than pre-deliberate: I'll save my remarks for my summative evaluation.