Raising the bar:

School board wants tougher evaluations for teachers and improvements in students' extracurricular activities

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

— School board members, at Monday’s board meeting, explained a part of the criteria for evaluating the job performance of district superintendent Dr. Randy Barrett next January.

In addition to improved ACT scores in comparison to other4A schools, maintaining a 10 percent carryover operating fund balance and collaborating with and working to carry out the intent of the school board, Barrett was told that “staff evaluations should accurately reflect teacher performance and allow for reassignment or dismissal of ineffective performers.” The board also set as a goal improvement in all extracurricular activities, whether it be to reassign or dismiss ineffective performers.

“If next year, all teachers have met or exceeded expectations, you haven’t met the goal,” said School board member Ted Dorn to Barrett. “I don’t think evaluations are being done,” he added, explaining that he didn’t think it was possible for the whole staff to have met or exceeded expectations and no teacher to have areas where improvements are not needed.

Dorn said he hasn’t seen in the teacher evaluations reviewed by the board any with remarks which indicate areas of concern or need for improvement. It would be almost impossible for poor performers to be reassigned or dismissed by a principal if their evaluations didn’t reflect any problems or need for improvement, he said.

In response to the board-set goal, Barrett shared a Feb. 3 e-mail letter he had written to the Arkansas Department of Education requesting a teacher performance model which the school district could consider and adopt for teacher evaluations.

Under the Race to the Top grant application for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars, a state teacher-evaluation system is required for use by school districts which have no such evaluation tool meeting RTTT guidelines.

School board member Coye Cripps said the goal regarding improvement in all extracurricular activities should be evaluated by participation and being competitive with other schools in the league.

“If we’re not competitive with anyone in our league weekend after weekend, then there’s a problem,” Cripps said.

Cripps suggested that students who couldn’t perform well in one sport or activity be reassigned or encouraged to try another activity where they might do better, rather than sitting on the bench. Instead of a coach working with 20 or more students on a team, it might be better to cut some who aren’t doing well and redirect them, he said.

Cripps said extracurricular activities included all activities, not just sports.

News, Pages 2 on 02/17/2010