April 2004 | Volume 61 | Number 7
Leading in Tough Times
Pages 52-58
Evaluating Administrators
Douglas B. Reeves
Results of the National Leadership Evaluation Study reveal the urgent need for fair, specific, and constructive leadership evaluation systems.
I have bad news, worse news, and a bit of good news. The bad news: Education leadership evaluation is a mess. Our national survey of leadership evaluation instruments reveals an astonishing disregard for what we know about effective feedback and meaningful evaluation. Newspapers provide box scores purporting to evaluate superintendents and principals on the basis of student test scores, but we rarely see any analysis of the impact of leadership on teaching and curriculum (Reeves, 2002a, 2002b).
The worse news: Improving leadership evaluation will be difficult. As the continued use of the grading system and the seven-period high school schedule attests, schools tend to cling to long-standing practices despite mountains of evidence pointing to the need for change.
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Copyright © 2004 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development