Today’s Tuscaloosa News, features an article about our school superintendent’s most recent evaluation (her first since 2005). The article quotes an evaluator from the Alabama Department of Education, who describes her scores, which are on a 4 point scale (with 4 being the highest), as follows: “ a 3.1 is a good score, . . . The other, the 2.5, is getting down towards average.”
Leaving aside the fact the superintendent evaluations seem to happen only every 5 years, unlike the annual evaluations teachers have, there remains a serious problem with his characterization of her scores. A 3.1 out of 4 is a 78, or a high C; in other words slightly above average. A 2.4 out of 4 is a 63, or a low D, barely above failing. That’s not “getting down toward average”: that’s nearly failing. With these kind of low expectations for administrators, is it any wonder that the Tuscaloosa City School system ranks 101 out of 124 school districts in Alabama? (And let’s face it, coming in at 31 out of 51, Alabama as a whole is below average, so we’re at the bottom of the rankings in a state that’s near the bottom to begin with.) Hey, at least we’ve got a good football team, right?