A new statewide evaluation system for superintendents will undergo testing in the spring in 13 school districts across the state.
The Arkansas Department of Education named the following districts as participants in the first pilot: Bryant and Greenbrier in central Arkansas; Jonesboro, Mountain Home, Pocahontas, Westside Consolidated and Wynne in northeast Arkansas; Gentry, Mountainburg and Siloam Springs in Northwest Arkansas; and Arkadelphia, Hope and Warren in south Arkansas.
State officials plan to expand the testing to 20 districts in 2015-16 and then conduct a statewide pilot in 2016-17, depending on feedback from school districts. Full implementation would happen in 2017-18.
To Mountain Home Superintendent Lonnie Myers, the new system will establish similar standards of performance for superintendents. The standards will provide guidance to school board members who often are not formally trained educators.
"Everybody who really wants to be the best they can be wants to raise the bar and set a high standard," Myers said. "I think it will help board members a lot. This is what our superintendent should be doing. These are standards to look at if they're high performing."
Work on a superintendent evaluation system began in fall 2013 in response to Act 222 of 2009, which intended to strengthen the system of Arkansas educational leadership development. The legislation established a School Leadership Coordinating Council to work with state agencies and aid in the development of model evaluation tools to use in the evaluation of school administrators.
The leadership council initially focused on an evaluation system for principals.
School boards are responsible for setting policy and for hiring a superintendent, and they must conduct annual evaluations of superintendents, though state law doesn't specify what the evaluations should include.
The Mountainburg School Board conducts a formal, written evaluation every year in January, said Brett Peters, president of the board.
"Any time you can evaluate staff that way, it provides them feedback, both positive and negative," Peters said. "I think it improves communication."
Peters said he is excited for the Crawford County district of 660 students to be included in the pilot.
"Any time you make a change, it makes you reflect," Peters said.
The Mountainburg School Board was at the forefront of the new teacher evaluation system, with the board opting to receive six hours of training and participate in piloting that system, Mountainburg Superintendent Dennis Copeland said. Copeland has discussed the principal evaluation system with them and thinks they will have a good background for understanding the new superintendent evaluation system.
"Everybody's working together to promote student learning and students getting as much as they can to be college and career ready," Copeland said.
The state Department of Education in 2013 awarded a $43,995 grant to the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators to develop the superintendent evaluation system, department spokesman Kimberly Friedman said. Another grant for the same amount was issued in August.
The process involves a 26-member committee that looked to the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium Standards to organize the expectations of superintendents into six categories and 31 functions.
Those standards were set by the Austin, Texas-based National Policy Board for Educational Administration, a consortium of executives of national education organizations, including the Council of Chief State School Officers.
"It's more about what the superintendent does than how," said Sandra Porter, a member of the Bryant Board of Education. "It's an opportunity for growth for the superintendent and for the school board to be a part of that."
The Bryant School District previously participated in pilots of statewide evaluation systems now in place for teachers and principals, and continuing that work with superintendent evaluations made sense, Porter said.
Porter served on the state superintendent evaluation committee as a representative of the Arkansas School Boards Association, of which she is the secretary and treasurer.
Metro on 11/16/2014