Evaluating the Huntsville BOE and Superintendent

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.