The School Administrator

October 2004Personnel EvaluationPortfolios, differentiated pay, teachers' dispositions

Features

CEO-Centric Evaluation
by Doug Eadie
The tale of a suburban superintendent and her nine-member board that speaks to the importance of the chief executive identifying his or her own leadership targets for the coming year. It’s a process that turns superintendent assessment into a powerful tool of partnership with the board.
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Performance-Based Evaluation for Superintendents
by Edward W. Costa II
The superintendent in East Longmeadow, Mass., inherited an annual evaluation instrument containing 47 criteria that lacked the capacity to recognize gradations in his performance. So he spent a year working with a board subcommittee on a better process.
Similar Reading: AASA’s six performance domains and East Longmeadow’s Evaluation Cycle and Additional Resources
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Redesigning Work and Compensation To Fit NCLB
by Jack D. Dale
A superintendent’s proposal for better addressing today’s site-level leadership and instructional needs in the new high-stakes assessment environment.read more | purchase issue
Experimenting With Teacher Compensation
by Allan Odden and Marc Wallace
School districts and states are experimenting with alternatives to traditional single-salary schedules. These innovations included knowledge- and skills-based salary schedules, school-based performance awards, bonuses for national certification and incentives for teachers accepting assignments in low-performing schools.
Similar Reading: Cases in Performance Pay: Denver and Vaughn Learning Center
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Principals’ Portfolios
by James E. Green
The use of a portfolio can serve as a reflective process for displaying professional competencies, personal qualities and job accomplishments, according to the author of a new book on principal evaluation.
Similar Reading: Additional Reading
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Evaluating Administrators With Portfolios
by Alexander Russo
To their users who include superintendents in a few places, portfolios offer a more valid, reliable and authentic form of assessing professional performance. But several significant challenges inhibit greater use.read more | purchase issue
The 20-Minute Hiring Assessment
by M. Mark Wasicsko
How to ensure you’re hiring the best teacher candidates by quickly sizing up their dispositions for classroom duty, according to the dean of the college of education at Eastern Kentucky University.
Similar Reading: A Quick Checklist
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Profile

Kevin L. Mitchell: From Law Enforcer to Survivalist by Jay P. Goldman

The superintendent in Big Horn County, Wyo., finds himself leading a fight for survival.read more

Departments

Punchback: Answering Critics

The Flawed Thinking Behind ‘No Excuses’ by Richard Rothstein

The author of Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap dissects four simplistic claims about poor schools that are succeeding.read more

Focuses

Crisis Management: In a Crisis, Focus on the People by Paul M. Hewitt

Crisis plans are well suited for handling emergency situations at a school, but most say nothing about how staff might cope in the aftermath. The death of a child at school brought this need home for one superintendent.read more

Rural Schools: Cooperative Planning for Rural Job Creation by Robert C. Kellogg

A district administrator’s role in cooperative job development as a strategy to give high-achieving students reasons for returning to their rural communities after college or military commitments.read more

Guest Columns

An Education Agenda for the Next President by James O’Hanlon and Doug Christensen

Unsolicited advice for how George Bush or John Kerry can shape an agenda carrying a positive impact on schools that has a chance to outlast presidential tenure.read more

A View of Accountability From 1,000 Feet by Glenn F. Smartschan

School leaders need some distance to see the harm they might commit by reducing instruction in second languages, the arts and physical education in order to maximize time for preparing students for high-stakes tests.read more

People

People

News of career changes, while the Sidelight shines on a Michigan superintendent who officiates high school football games.read more

Board-Savvy Superintendent

Keeping Board Members in Touch With the Classroom by David W. Gordon

Superintendents would be wise to have strategies ready to help school board members learn firsthand about the realities of the new standards-based environment. The author is superintendent of the Sacramento County, Calif., Office of Education.read more

President’s Corner

Connecting All the Pieces of the Mission by Donald L. Kussmaul, president, AASA

Recognizing that a school district is one of many connected systems within a community, AASA is embarking on an exciting venture, the creation of a Center for System Leadership.read more

Executive Perspective

Making Great Time on a Lost Highway by Paul D. Houston, executive director, AASA

The current reform agenda is a mechanistic approach that assumes that by fixing pieces, you can fix the whole. Another view comes closer to reality for AASA’s director — that of the universe — by appreciating the complexity of connections.read more

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