A Senate amendment to the Assembly’s school governance law that hasn’t gotten much attention is one that would establish “quality of curriculum and instruction” as a basis on which superintendents must evaluate principals. It’s a move that people familiar with the Department of Education say is desperately needed.
Legally, superintendents in each district have always been responsible for rating principals. But in recent years, a shift to a more formulaic evaluation process has stripped superintendents of their influence, say people familiar with the evaluation process.
“The DOE has depended more on the accountability system rather than on what the superintendents determined,” said David Bloomfield, a professor at Brooklyn College who helps train school administrators.
“There’s a lack of clarity about the role of what the superintendent is,” said Judi Aronson, a former superintendent. “Although theoretically they evaluate principals and sign off on many documents relating to evaluation, evaluation is only by the metrics of the progress report, PPR, and quality review.”
The metrics Aronson referred to were put in place in January 2008, when the city changed the formula for principal evaluation as a result of the principals union contract agreed upon two years ago. The formula based 32 percent of a principal’s annual “grade” on his school’s progress report score, 22 percent on the Quality Review grade, 10 percent on legal compliance, and 5 percent on offering special education services. The remaining 31 percent of the Principal Performance Review grade has been based on whether principals have met the “goals and objectives” they set out for themselves, goals that officials say are best when they relate to student achievement. The formula means that a principal at a school where test scores are increasing is virtually assured of a passing evaluation, no matter what teachers, parents, or the community superintendent thinks.
After the change, principal evaluations became “a lot more objective,” according to Santi Taveras, the DOE official who until May was in charge of principal evaluation metrics. (I spoke with him about principal evaluations in March; since then, he has become deputy chancellor for teaching and learning.) Before then, principals’ annual evaluation was “basically all subjective,” with community superintendents basing a principal’s grade on their holistic impression of his performance, Taveras said.
But the holistic evaluation allowed superintendents to address problems that aren’t reflected in a school’s test scores, Aronson said.
“I certainly also looked at data and progress, but it also very much had to do with the day-in-day-out running of the school,” she said about her tenure as the superintendent of Manhattan’s District 3 in the 2005-2006 school year. For the last three years, she was a network leader in the Empowerment Schools Organization, a role she said gave her more influence over the principals she supervised.
Both Bloomfield and Aronson cautioned that the Senate’s principal evaluation model would be only as good as the superintendents employed by the system.
“The provision depends on good-faith compliance by the DOE and the quality of superintendents,” Bloomfield said.
Aronson said requiring superintendents would to address instructional issues would be a positive change, but she noted that some superintendents in recent years have had no or only brief experience as principals. “I want to make sure that every single superintendent has been a principal who can do that well,” she said.
The new school governance law originally passed by the Assembly clarifies the role of the superintendent more substantially, giving them some authority over district budgets and requiring that they work “predominantly” inside their own district. It also explicitly states that superintendents must evaluate principals.
“Only focusing on the outcomes is not enough,” Aronson said. “What’s important is how you get the outcomes. And you can only get that by visiting classrooms.”