Since posting the Children Evaluating Teachers post Sunday night, there have been several details to come to light that need your attention.

Despite a district representative’s claims to the contrary, I have been told that these evaluations from eight-year olds have indeed been used during the evaluation process of non-tenured teachers at the end of the year last year. In other words, the results from a non-scientific survey of eight-year olds has been used by the district to decide if a non-tenured teacher should be allowed to continue teaching another year.

The District “Exaggerates” the Truth

When the district representative wrote, “This information is not used to evaluate teachers,” this person was either completely misinformed or attempting to spin the truth of the situation to appease an upset parent. These surveys of children are absolutely used to evaluate teachers.

Furthermore, I’ve heard from several other concerned citizens and teachers since posting. The consensus is that the district is absolutely using the opinion of children to evaluate teachers. They are even using these opinions when, as this teacher shared, the students are clearly using the evaluation to work out their frustrations with the teacher:

Evaluating the Huntsville City Board

In response to the completely reasonable and accurate survey that the district had our eight-year olds filling out for their teachers, a friend of mine has created a similar survey asking for your opinion of the superintendent and the Huntsville City Schools Board of Education. This is your opportunity to share your opinions about the board’s and the superintendent’s responsiveness to the students, teachers and public.

The survey will be open from now until April 28, 2013, so please take a moment to go and offer your assessment of the board and the superintendent. There are a total of 28 questions, and your participation is completely anonymous. (On this matter, I give you my word. If you share honest opinions, no one will ever know that you were the one to share them.)

If you have a connection to Huntsville City Schools, please take a few minutes out of your time over the next two weeks to share with us your opinion of the board of education and the superintendent. When the survey is closed, I will share the results of the survey here.

You may access the survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HCSBOESURVEY2013. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to complete. Please share the survey with everyone you know as well.

Thanks y’all. Together we can turn this ship around before it sinks. I’m convinced of this.

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Remember back with Dr. Moore was our superintendent? It was an interesting time right there toward the end of her tenure. It was “clear” that Huntsville City Schools was in trouble. It was also clear that the board was looking for nearly anyone to take the blame for that trouble other than themselves.

And yet, at Dr. Moore’s final evaluation, the board gave her a perfect evaluation. Not only that, but at the previous evaluation in 2009 (before everyone was aware of the issues facing the system), she also received, you guessed it, a perfect evaluation.

Strange, don’t you think?

Dr. Robinson thought it was strange as well. In fact, she said as much in May of 2010. She complained that, “if we have an instrument that does not permit us to accurately evaluate the superintendent, I think there’s a problem.”

That’s right, Dr. Robinson, defender extraordinaire of the new Superintendent and all of his work to change the culture of our system by forcing strict evaluation of teachers based on student performance on standardized testing scores, was two years ago complaining about the failure of a standardized test for Dr. Moore.

So she criticizes standardized testing when it doesn’t suit her purpose (to get rid of Dr. Moore), and she specifically volunteers to develop a personalized evaluation test for Dr. Wardynski to convince the city that he is in fact worth, in her words, “every penny.”

Dr. Robinson developed these standards of evaluation specifically for him with specific input from him concerning what and how he should be evaluated.

So let’s follow the logic here for a minute.

• Standardized testing is flawed when it comes to evaluating Dr. Moore. (It was flawed in 2009 and again in 2010 even though nothing was done to change it during the intervening year.)
• Since standardized testing was flawed with Dr. Moore, the evaluation tool we use for Dr. Wardynski must be personalized to him and by him.
• However, Dr. Wardynski’s constant claims that standardized testing is the only way for teachers to know how well their students are performing in the classroom are in no way hypocritical. We should simply realize that like the double standard in hiring and salaries (and bonuses before employees even start), means that there must be a double standard in evaluation of those employees.

So we have two standards when people raise issues about professional misconduct, two standards for complaints about employees, two standards for hiring policies, and two standards for evaluation. Our superintendent has the benefit of having an evaluation that was designed specifically for him. In fact, he had significant input into the method of evaluation that would be used.

If he fails his evaluation, he won’t get an additional $10,000. I’m sure that will be just terrible for him.

If our kids fail their evaluation, they’re marked for life, and their teachers are threatened or fired.

It must be nice to be able to evaluated on your strengths rather than others’ weaknesses.

A “strong leader” leads by example, not by hypocrisy.

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