KNOX COUNTY SCHOOLS ANDREW JOHNSON BUILDING Dr. James P. McIntyre Jr., Superintendent MEMORANDUM TO: FROM: Chair and Members Knox County Board of Education Dr. James P. McIntyre, Jr. Superintendent DATE: July 31, 2009 RE: Superintendent Performance Self-Evaluation The Superintendent s Performance Evaluation Protocol adopted by the Knox County Board of Education on February 4, 2009 outlines the procedure for evaluation of the Superintendent of the Knox County Schools. That performance evaluation procedure calls for the Superintendent to submit a self-evaluation to the Board by the beginning of August. Please accept this memorandum as my self-evaluation for the 2008-09 school year. Introduction It is a great privilege for me to serve as the Superintendent of the Knox County Schools. A supportive community, many involved parents, a committed Board of Education, talented educators, an engaged business community, and a proud history of student academic success and instructional innovation make Knox County a wonderful place to lead the public school district. Over the past year, I have had many opportunities to listen and learn about the history and context of public education in Knox County, and also to discern the priorities, interests and aspirations of our community regarding the education of their children. Several community P.O. Box 2188 912 South Gay Street Knoxville, Tennessee 37901-2188 Telephone (865) 594-1620
forums, discussions with local groups and parent organizations, and visiting all 86 of our schools were enormously helpful in these pursuits. This information assisted tremendously in the development of our vision for the future, and our five-year strategic plan. I believe this first year has been a successful one from a variety of perspectives, including through the lens of the four areas of focus outlined in the Superintendent s evaluation protocol. We have successfully articulated a vision for the future of the Knox County Schools, and have developed a detailed strategic plan to realize this vision. We have prioritized our resources and more fully aligned them with our educational goals. We have seen some gains, and some hopeful indicators of future success in our academic outcomes, and we have invited and engaged parents and the community more fully in the educational life of our children. I am grateful to the Board for appointing me as Superintendent, and I look forward to many more years of productive collaboration as we seek to ensure that every student receives an outstanding public education in Knox County. Student Achievement High-level student learning and academic success is our highest priority and will be achieved through an intense instructional focus, strong strategic direction, pervasive collaboration and clear accountability. Currently available academic outcome measures coupled with preliminary unpublished student assessment data highlight some areas for improvement, but more generally show modest academic growth and progress over the past academic year. 1 As of July 31,, 2009 there are some academic outcome measures that have been released by the State of Tennessee for the past academic year, but some measures are still being analyzed or are currently embargoed. The most significant indicator that has been made public thus far is Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). 1 The coming school year (2009-10), will be the first year of implementation of the Tennessee Diploma Project in the Volunteer State, which will almost certainly require a resetting of a new baseline, due to a new more rigorous definition of student academic proficiency. While we welcome these new higher standards, it will create short-term challenges in evaluating the academic progress of the Knox County Schools, and therefore the performance of the Superintendent as well. McIntyre: Superintendent Self-Evaluation 7/31/09 2
Each year, every school is expected to make Adequate Yearly Progress toward the goal of all students being proficient in English/reading and mathematics by 2014. Appropriate progress must be made by the school overall, and by each sub-group of students (economically disadvantaged students, African-American students, students with disabilities, etc.) that numbers 45 students or more. If progress targets are not reached in any one subgroup, or if NCLB benchmarks are not met in high school graduation rate or attendance (at elementary or middle schools) then the school will be labeled as having failed to make AYP. Schools that fail to make AYP for one year are labeled targeted schools by the state, and schools that fail to make AYP in two or more consecutive years fall under the high priority status. Once in high priority status, a school must make AYP for two consecutive years to return to the status of good standing. While an imperfect measure to be sure, AYP has two distinct advantages as an important performance indicator: 1) even as an aggregate indicator, it measures our academic progress with all categories of students, and 2) it requires schools to continually improve and increase outcomes for each successive class of children, and in that sense it is a challenging and rigorous measure of progress. In school year 2007-08, the Knox County Schools had 13 high priority schools, and 12 targeted schools. In 2008-09, the KCS again had 25 schools on the NCLB list, 15 of which were high priority schools. 2 While the KCS has more high priority schools in 2008-09, more of our schools made AYP or met their NCLB benchmarks than in the previous year. In 2007-08, 23 of our 86 schools (26.7%) failed to make AYP, while in 2008-09, 19 of 86 failed to make AYP (22.1%). This represents a 17.4% decrease in the number of schools that failed to make AYP in 2008-09. 3 In addition, preliminary analysis of yet to be publicly released student value-added assessment results (TVAAS), and proportions of students scoring proficient or advanced on state assessments look somewhat promising. With these indicators, there are some results that will 2 The district did not make Adequate Yearly Progress in 2008-09 due to student performance in several sub-groups and high school graduation rate. 3 This statistic is purposely stated as a decrease to a negative. The populations in our special day schools and alternative schools are rarely large or stable enough to be considered for AYP, and our early education centers and primary school do not have grade levels that are assessed under NCLB. These schools, therefore, have neither made AYP nor failed to make AYP. Perhaps the best way to present our progress, therefore, is by examining the change in the proportion of our schools that failed to make AYP. McIntyre: Superintendent Self-Evaluation 7/31/09 3
highlight areas for improvement, but there generally appears to be a trend toward some modest growth over the prior academic year. Some of these data should be available prior to the Board s evaluation discussion on August 31 st. Strategic Planning On July 1, 2009 the Superintendent recommended, and the Knox County Board of Education unanimously approved the Knox County Schools five year strategic plan, entitled Excellence for All Children. The approximately 100 page document outlines four major goal areas, objectives and strategic initiatives for each goal, as well as specific timelines and metrics for success. The strategic plan was the product of many months work by a broad variety of stakeholders, including teachers, parents, staff, community members, business people, Board members, students and administrators. The strategic plan grew out of a specific vision for the future of the Knox County Schools that was offered and presented in December, 2008. The strategic plan provides a detailed blueprint for our future instructional work in the Knox County Schools, and provides a practical document to provide KCS faculty and staff guidance in the myriad important decisions they make every day to provide an outstanding education for every child. The strategic planning process was inclusive, substantive, data-informed, and responsive to the needs of our stakeholders and our children. The deliverable -- the strategic plan itself -- is a high quality, comprehensive, detailed blueprint to achieve our vision of excellence for all of our students. I am proud of the work that our staff and the Knox County Schools community put into the development of this plan, and I believe that it meets or exceeds the expectations that the Board of Education held for this component of the Superintendent s performance. Effective Use of Resources Aligning our resources with our educational mission has been a central focus for me, literally since my first day on the job. Recognizing that we did not have an approved budget, and that we had limited opportunity to balance the Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 budget since spending had already begun, I froze all non-discretionary spending and non-school vacant positions on my first official day as Superintendent, July 7, 2008. This preserved the opportunity to come back to McIntyre: Superintendent Self-Evaluation 7/31/09 4
the School Board with a reasonable and balanced budget proposal for FY2009. Student safety and school security became major issues early in the last school year, and we were able to quickly marshal resources and leverage partnerships to begin to address these challenges. For FY2010, we proposed to the School Board a balanced budget that was both fiscally responsible and educationally sound. While economic circumstances are difficult, and revenues were projected to be essentially flat, the senior staff worked diligently with me to identify savings, and reallocate funding from lower priority spending items to areas of more critical educational need. One of the major enhancements made to the budget development process was the creation and implementation of a school budget allocation methodology, or a school budget formula. This allowed for the distribution of financial resources to schools to be more equitable, rational, and transparent. The Fiscal Year 2010 budget, despite the challenging economic times was adopted unanimously by the Knox County School Board this spring. In addition to a focus on efficient use of fiscal resources, effective utilization of human capital was an important theme in 2008-09 as well. Several critical appointments and personnel changes were made to enhance our instructional focus, and a new organizational structure was introduced to more closely align our functional units and reporting lines with the important educational work that we have outlined in our strategic plan. Family and Community Engagement The profile and priority of family and community engagement has been significantly enhanced in academic year 2008-09. This past year I have made a point of reaching out to large numbers of parents and community members through community forums, speeches and discussion at Parent Teacher Association (PTA) gatherings, and attending athletic, cultural and recognition events at many schools. In addition, I was able to be in attendance at all 13 of our high school graduation ceremonies this spring. McIntyre: Superintendent Self-Evaluation 7/31/09 5
Perhaps more significantly, parents and community members were invited to be part of the strategic planning process, and assisted in the development of the plan which identifies Family and Community Engagement as one of four major goals for the Knox County Schools over the next five years. Through the reorganization of the central office, I have created a new position that will focus full-time on Family Engagement. That appointment was made at the end of July 2009, and the incumbent will be an active member of my leadership team. This position will ensure that schools have a resource and support in their efforts to enhance family engagement, and that the issue of engaging parents in the educational process is continually on our agenda. Finally, on the question of parent satisfaction, while we do not currently have recent data on parent satisfaction indicators (we plan to collect this data periodically in the future), I am very proud of the fact that in April I was honored by the state-wide PTA as the 2009 Tennessee Outstanding Superintendent of the Year. I see this as an indicator that parents in Knox County believe that we are moving in a positive direction, and see a bright future for their children. Conclusion This has been a tremendous school year, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead the Knox County Schools. While the 2008-09 school year has not been without some bumps in the road, and while the Knox County Schools clearly still has a lot of work to do, I believe that the strategic direction we have embarked upon is appropriate to our circumstances, responsive to our community, and fundamentally sound. I believe that I have met the expectations that the Board of Education articulated through the Superintendent appointment process, and that I have exceeded those expectations in several areas. Given this solid performance, the partnerships that have been built, the direction that has been set, and the leadership that has been demonstrated, I would respectfully request that the Board of Education extend my current employment contract through August 31, 2013. cc: Executive Team McIntyre: Superintendent Self-Evaluation 7/31/09 6