What gets measured gets done

Why Superintendent evaluations might be the most powerful lever you have as a school board member.

Your job as a school board member is basically to set the vision and goals for the district (in collaboration with the superintendent) and then manage the superintendent to achieve those goals. Period.

If you do this one thing really well, you will almost certainly increase your impact.

However, most school board members don't have previous experience managing a CEO of a multi-million/billion dollar company (I didn't) - and our national survey shows that training and support in this area is low quality and lacking.

Managing your superintendent includes at least 4 distinct activities:

1. Recruiting, hiring and onboarding
2. Managing & supporting
3. Evaluating
4. Transition / succession planning

I'm going to quickly touch on all 4 and then dive into Superintendent Evaluations today.

If you want to go straight to our Superintendent Evaluation Toolkit, you can do so here. (free account sign-up required)

Recruiting, hiring and onboarding

In our experience, School Boards tend to abdicate a lot of responsibility for recruitment to Superintendent search firms, who do not do a great job of recruiting diverse candidates based on results. We recommend that boards actively recruit candidates via LinkedIn, Chiefs for Change, Leading Now, Alma Advisory Group and personal networks. More on this in a future post. We also find that boards tend to minimize the importance of onboarding, which sets the tone for your relationship with your superintendent.

Managing and supporting your Superintendent

Management is a verb, not a noun.

In your day job, management is a daily/weekly activity. Unfortunately when it comes to managing a superintendent, it often becomes an annual event - the evaluation. This isn't enough.

Management of the superintendent primarily falls to the Board President/Chair and VP/Vice Chair, but the entire board should be aware and engaged in support of the Pres/VP.

I recommend holding quarterly Board Executive Sessions focused on Superintendent Evaluation. This allows the entire Board and Superintendent more time to set goals, check-in on progress, and engage in thoughtful conversation around their performance - what is going well, and where they need more support.

Speaking of support, many boards forget that a big part of your job is to ensure that your superintendent is successful!

After all, unless you are planning to fire your superintendent, you want/need them to be successful so that student outcomes improve!

The number one reason most people leave a job, including superintendents, is their manager. Don't be a manager that drives away a high potential superintendent.

What does a good manager do?

Good managers balance accountability with support. Support might look like a Chief of Staff or another position to help the superintendent manage their huge job. It might look like providing them with a high quality executive coach or mentor. It might look like paying for high quality professional development or a community of practice. It might look like support of their self-care - whatever that means to them. It definitely means treating them with respect publicly and privately. It means asking them what they need to be successful and trying to support those needs.

This is especially important if you are managing a superintendent who has an underrepresented identity. Superintendents of color, who are women, who are LGBTQ+, who speak English as a second language, who have a disability, etc. need even more active management and support from their board to ensure their success achieving your collective goals.

Transition/ Succession Planning

Your should try never to be caught off guard by a superintendent's departure. Succession planning should be part of your regular management conversations with your superintendent. Your superintendent should always be formally preparing their replacement. If their current #2 or #3 isn't your future superintendent, then they should hire someone now to start mentoring and training. You don't want to wait until your superintendent leaves to find out that their #2 or #3 isn't ready to take on the role.

Superintendent Evaluation

Prior to working with us, Antonia's superintendent evaluation was a 45-page narrative completed laboriously by the Superintendent and staff. The document was primarily a report on various qualitative accomplishments, but it was not clearly rooted in the achievement of measurable goals for improved student learning, nor did it represent the input of board members themselves.

In contrast, the new process led by Antonia, with support from SBP’s policy coach, was summarized by a 1-page framework document, with 60% of the evaluation based on the achievement of four of the board’s highest priority SMART goals for student outcomes. This new process is significantly more efficient and ensures the superintendent is more accountable for student achievement as assessed by independent metrics and board members.

Additionally, Antonia is leading her board to memorialize this new framework as part of the governance policy as well as positioning the SMART goals to drive the focus of future budgets.

The opposite of Antonia's too-dense superintendent evaluation are the many districts who don't evaluate their superintendent at all or who give positive evaluations despite abysmal student performance.

As a board member, it is NOT your job to run the district or to tell the superintendent how to run the district. But it IS your job to be clear with the Superintendent about their highest priorities and how their success will be measured.

What gets measured gets done.

It really is that simple.

In my experience, once we clarified measurable goals for our superintendent, within one year the entire system was aligned around achieving them. In fact, this tends to work so well that you have to be really careful that you are setting the right goals so that you incentivize the right priorities throughout the system!

There is more to our recommended evaluation process, including a 360 review, community input and board input.

You can find our complete Superintendent Evaluation toolkit here. (free registration required)

One more note - doing management and evaluation well takes time. That is why our next report will recommend that board members - and especially board presidents - should be paid more and receive higher quality training and support!

Superintendents - what did I forget? What could your school board do to manage you better?

Carrie Douglass is the co-founder and co-CEO of School Board Partners and a twice-elected school board member in Bend, Oregon. Douglass is a former teacher, school leader, district administrator, education funder and nonprofit leader. She owns three small businesses with her husband and has two children in public schools in the district she represents. Ms. Douglass holds a BA in Education and an MBA in strategy and finance.