Principles To Guide The Path Forward To Reform

This document is not ‘light reading.’

The subject of public education is too important for the acquiescent acceptance of the status quo to continue. It is true that the emotions that can attach to the subjects can be intense. However, there has never been a time in our community’s (or the nation’s) development that the need to face important issues with courage and strength of purpose to do what is right has been more needed.

It should be stated as often as is necessary to make sure that those who read this document do not question my motivation when it comes to public education in Katy I.S.D.

Outstanding classroom teachers are delivering outstanding instruction to tens of thousands of students every school day. Many of our graduates go on to achieve extraordinary accomplishments in their future educational endeavors as well as in the workforce. As a community, we are rightfully proud of our classroom teachers and of our students.

Compared to the majority of other schools districts in Texas, we take pride in having one of best.

That’s just a part of the story – the part that those who defend the status quo want you to see. However, the truth is that the standards of accountability in Texas are substandard. The Texas Education Agency has established politically correct standards that allow very low performing school districts such as Houston I.S.D. and Dallas I.S.D. (and many hundreds more throughout Texas) to maintain acceptable ratings in order to maintain support for the institution and profess compliance with Constitutional standards of academic equity.

This is a common situation throughout the 50 states of the United States. Thus, the truth is that there is no active and operational standard (NAEP notwithstanding) of comparing school districts in which Katy I.S.D. would not rank near the top. The standards of accountability have been compromised.

In truth, the extraordinary levels of excellence that do exist in Katy I.S.D. help ‘wash away’ or ‘average out’ the genuine deficiencies that exist.

That is harsh reality. Nonetheless, it is reality.

Our high comparison to other districts based upon these comprised state standards cannot disguise the reality that public education in general and Katy I.S.D. in particular have undergone tremendous changes over the past many years. Many of these changes have dramatically hurt the quality of the public education system.

While we all take pride in Katy I.S.D., it is unrealistic to believe that the political-correctness pressures along with financial and academic accountability compromises that our political leaders, educational and corporate lobbyists, and powerful vested interests have forced upon and into the system have passed by Katy I.S.D. leaving our district immune from the turmoil and general decline of the system itself.

The challenge that confronts all of us is four-fold:

• Do we choose to just focus on that portion of our school district that still symbolizes genuine excellence?
• Do we choose to ignore the signs all around us of deep and systemic problems that have been building for more than a decade?
• Do we choose to confront reality with the integrity to understand the degree to which the reputation of the overall quality of education in our district is coasting on the performance of fewer and fewer?
• Do we choose to take the time to consider hard facts, tough analysis, and mounds and mounds of actual data as the foundation of restoring management integrity to our central administration and school board that has played such a significant role in enabling the problems we face to go unaddressed?

There is no magic wand to wave here. The simple solutions were more simple 10 to 15 years ago when the problems were on the horizon. There were voices in the past that waved the red flags of concern.

Then, image and ego shunted these concerns to the background.

Past school boards abandoned their responsibility to develop management accountability systems to hold administrators accountable for performance and the effectiveness of the programs they imposed upon the system.

As the professional associations such as the Texas Association of School Boards and the Texas Association of School Administrators grew in power and influence, so to did those that came to depend upon vast billions of dollars for their corporate profits.

Selected major law firms, major business groups, and literally hundreds of special “cottage industries” have grown rich and powerful in the budget allocations of public school finance. They help write the laws and regulations. They work to inhibit the rightful power of school boards. They elevate the status of superintendents with long term contracts and overly generous benefits. They help create and support artificially high salaries for top administrators that insulate them from economic realities.

On the day that most become superintendents in major or big suburban school districts like Katy I.S.D., they have a contract that actually requires their permission to hold them accountable in any meaningful sense. On the day these superintendents sign their first contracts, they have the equivalent of a golden parachute; they have the ‘keys’ to the administration; and schools boards that willingly come along for the ride.

This debilitating cycle must stop. Why?

Because once empowered without genuine standards of accountability, everybody else including property taxpayers, classroom teachers, parents, students, and others are along for the ride as well – second class citizens in a subservient position to an administration that has outsmarted and out-negotiated the elected leaders of the community.

And, that is exactly what has happened in Katy for the last 20 or more years.

Superintendents armed with multi-year contracts, golden parachutes, no meaningful accountability, and acquiescent school board members demand and get unquestioned loyalty from their administrative teams.

Programs flow from the superintendent’s cabinet through his willing administrators who depend upon the superintendent for their jobs to the campuses and classrooms like the Mississippi River flows to the Gulf of Mexico.

The administrative standard in a modern school district long ago stopped being accountability for performance. The primary standard is loyalty to the boss. If the boss wants to establish the Center of Truth, his team salutes. If the boss wants to focus on a mantra of “Truth North,” his team turns northward and salutes.

If the boss wants to emphasize the “Sternberg Triarchic Station” as a solution to significant curriculum deficiencies, the “Sternberg” sails on. If the boss changes his mind and decides the mantra of Professional Learning Community is the next “Pied Piper” solution to educational challenges, then “PLC” becomes the acronym of choice – the ‘magic beans’ de jour.

The modern superintendent of schools has turned teams of professional administrators into the equivalent of groupies capable of moving seamlessly from one boss to another when the cycle starts over. This cycle must stop.

Here are some facts about Katy I.S.D. and this report:

• The disparity of student academic performance is growing. There is great disparity in academic performance even at our higher performing high schools, and there is even greater disparity among our high schools.
• The central administration is imposing academic programs on classroom teachers for which there is no valid research demonstrating the effectiveness of improvement in student academic performance.
• The superintendent of schools is employed under a contract that has the equivalent of “cotton candy” standards of evaluation. That phrase also describes the accountability standards of his administrative team.
• The district’s classroom teachers are under siege by administrative mandates that do not serve the interests of our students, parents, and taxpayers. In many ways, the modern classroom has become an experimental ‘research and development’ department of vendors, consultants, and administrators looking to pad their resumes.
• The actual administrative costs of public education are grossly understated because of state law and the Texas Education Agency.
• The school board has willingly, voluntarily surrendered power it should have kept to allow a more robust debate about public education issues in the school district. That is not even the worst of it. Board majorities including Katy I.S.D.’s have passed ‘sledge-hammer’ policies specifically designed to keep independent, reform-minded school board members that do get elected under control.

This report is not pleasant reading. However, if the citizens of Katy are going to preserve the genuine excellence that still exists, it must deal with the reality that there are grave, serious problems than can only be resolved if the public demands that its school board re-establishes its rightful and legal authority to hold its administrators truly accountable.

Amidst all of the roadblocks that a powerful bureaucracy and its status-quo defenders have erected to keep the citizens ‘at bay’, classroom teachers in fear, and independent school board members muzzled, there is a real path to reform.

Armed with decades of experience in public policy research with a particular focus on public education accountability, my report seeks to engage the public in a serious effort of reform.

We can do this. We all can be successful.

Our classroom teachers need us more than ever. Our children’s future is at stake. The taxpayers deserve accountability.

The facts are on our side. Together, let’s continue what the voters of Katy I.S.D. started last May.

Three Guiding Principles Designed To Restore The Management Integrity of Katy I.S.D.

Katy I.S.D. still provides a superior quality of education to a significant percentage of its students as manifested by the post-graduate performance of high numbers of its graduates. We attribute this to several HISTORICAL factors:

• Parents of students in Katy I.S.D. value education and both expect and guide their children in the direction of strong performance.
• The classroom teachers of the district are among the best in the profession in Texas. Because Katy I.S.D. has been an iconic suburban school district, it has been able to attract and keep a highly professional staff. The taxpayers of the district have long supported a strong salary structure for classroom teachers.
• The taxpayers of Katy I.S.D. have long been willing to support the construction of outstanding facilities and aggressive maintenance for the upkeep of facilities.

Katy I.S.D. has already undergone dramatic changes that literally have eroded some of the historical strengths that have allowed the district to maintain uniformly high standards across the board.

• With rapid growth of students and campuses, the district has evolved from its historical strength of leadership at the campus level to a rigid, top-down, cookie-cutter, one philosophy fits all mentality at the central administration level.
• With this management evolution towards an old ‘Soviet-like’ central command structure, an over-dependence upon the power of the administration to impose its solutions on the campus level rather than depend upon the wisdom, experience, and practical knowledge of our classroom teachers has solidified.
• As the power of the central administration has flourished over the past 15 years or more due to this rush to centralized power, the practical influence of the elected Board of Trustees has diminished greatly. The historical relationship that once saw the elected school board as the ultimate protection of students, classroom teachers, parents, and taxpayers has eroded – too often voluntarily – into a sort of strategic defense initiative protecting the ever-advancing power of the central administration.
• With the growth of the power of the central administration and the reduced influence of the school board, there has been a vast increase in the arrogance of that central administration that manifests itself towards every sector of the Katy community. Unfortunately, the primary target of this growing arrogance is the professional staff of the district especially including classroom teachers.
• So significant is this shift in the power of the district, the quality of education provided to our students and the skill sets of our graduates are dropping. This drop is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of provable fact documented not only in the state’s accountability system but in a wide range of independent academic data readily available to the administration and the school board.
• While it is unpleasant to note, it is a fact that one of the manifestations of both the arrogance and the power of the central administration is that it has chosen not to honestly communicate this full range of information to the parents and taxpayers of the district.
• Equally tragically, successive school boards over the last 20 years in particular have allowed their powerful central administrators the management ‘cover’ to both increase its unilateral power and reduce the flow of important information to parents and taxpayers.

The path to protecting our school district’s future quality from both the growth that is still coming and the rapidly changing student profile that is ongoing will not be available unless the appropriate power and influence of the school board is restored.

The objective standards of evaluating the performance and productivity of the superintendent of schools in this district are wholly inadequate to protect the decision-making process. Unless a new standard of contractual accountability is developed, the imbalance in power leaves the district in a classic ‘tail wagging the dog’ situation.

Until the school board develops a plan to communicate to the superintendent that the position is genuinely accountable to the elected board, the lack of management accountability will continue to infect the superintendent’s entire management team.

• Successive school boards have voluntarily surrendered their authority in critical ways:
• Successive boards have sharply restricted allowing electing members to bring items of business to the agenda of the board.
• Successive boards have sharply restricted debate among its members at board meetings.
• Successive boards have sharply restricted the ability of its members to question administrative officials on policy matters on the agenda of board meetings.
• Successive boards have refused to enact legally permissable practices at board meetings to encourage higher levels of participation by private citizens thus restricting the ability of private citizens to have meaningful and timely input into policy considerations.
• Successive boards have refused to demand significant informational reports from its administrators on important policy objectives choosing rather to accept carefully scripted, virtually canned presentations that avoid major issues of accountability.
• Successive boards have allowed major policy objectives to be implemented without any standards of objective accountability tied to performance measures in the contract of the superintendent of schools.
• Successive boards have allowed the superintendent of schools free reign in the standards by which other administrators have been held accountable for performance.

These are the three guiding principles of the specific strategies designed to change the current reality of the management of this district that will be noted in this report.

However, it is important to add an unequivocal statement of philosophy because the action plan suggested here could at least initially could be misconstrued by those who want to protect their status quo power at all costs. So, it should be very clear in this philosophical statement:

The quality of our classroom teachers in Katy I.S.D. is second to none in Texas. While this policy paper will be addressing business management and accountability issues, it will also address issues of curriculum accountability. The problems addressed in the arena of academic accountability ARE NOT criticisms of our classroom teachers.

Our classroom teachers are the victims of the worst kind of top-down management that prevent many of them from being the most effective teachers they could be due to absolutely no fault of their own.

The problems identified in this arena lie at the footsteps of a curriculum bureaucracy run amok supported by a central administration that has usurped too much power and enabled by a working school board majority too lazy and too unwilling to do what is necessary to control the bureaucracy and empower our top-flight classroom educators.

All efforts or statements misrepresenting this report as an attack on classroom teachers by those seeking to preserve their run-away power from genuine accountability or by the working board majority trying to justify their failed leadership will be gross misrepresentations at best and outright lies at worst.

Now, the rest of this position paper will outline components of an initial action plan, the reasons behind each of its objectives, and the goals the goals and objectives will accomplish. Under these three guiding principles, operational principles, specific goals, and enunciated strategies to achieve reform are also outlined.

The eight operational principles that are now enunciated involve the important concept of ACCOUNTABILITY and can also be simultaneously stated as specific objectives:

• Enhanced Accountability for the Superintendent of School.
• Enhanced Accountability for the management team of the Superintendent of Schools.
• Enhanced Accountability evaluating the program initiatives used by the district for the purported purpose of improving student academic performance.
• Enhanced Accountability ensuring that the members of the Katy I.S.D. school board are kept FULLY and TIMELY informed of all major financial developments affecting the operations of the district.
• Enhanced Accountability ensuring that the grievance procedures protecting classroom teachers from a de facto hostile work environment are reasonably and fairly effective for all concerned.
• Enhanced Accountability evaluating the performance of school board members in exercising their legitimate, lawful, and fiduciary responsibility ensuring that all issues of importance are appropriately and fully discussed in open session of the school board.
• Enhanced Accountability ensuring that members of the general public and the professional staff of Katy I.S.D. have full and meaningful opportunities to participate in the debate on major public initiatives of the district and the evaluation of programs that have been implemented.
• Enhanced Accountability ensuring equal educational opportunities and support for all the campuses of Katy I.S.D. while addressing disparity between North of I-10 campuses and ones on the South.

The bullet-points flow smoothly on a piece of paper. However, the real world we confront in public education is neither as neat nor clean an environment as is the real world of the status quo politics of public education in general and Katy I.S.D. in particular.

The broad principles and asserted goals represent a “sea-change” for the current status quo. They are more than bullet points on a piece of paper. Each represents a significant barrier to which the institutions of public education itself and those who are enriched by its generous billions of dollars will fight tooth and nail.

Enhanced Accountability For The Superintendent of Schools

The Katy I.S.D. School Board must re-assert its lawful authority to establish processes by which the superintendent of school is evaluated for performance.

This positions recognizes the reality that the “cows are out of the barn” for the most part in terms of the current superintendent of schools.

Even a casual reading of the superintendent’s contract documents with clarity the one-sided nature of the pact that makes it difficult to transition to higher standard of performance within the context of the existing, long-standing agreement.

The contract, however, clearly does provide ‘avenues’ to achieve higher standards of accountability. The fundamental flaw of the existing contract is that such higher standards of accountability cannot be arbitrarily included by the action of the board. The superintendent must VOLUNTARILY agree to higher standards of accountability.

The contract, however, does clearly provide the board with sole-discretion authority that could be used as negotiating leverage to transition to higher standards of accountability.

The superintendent’s current contract is multi-year. The contract allows the board at its discretion the authority to extend (or not extend) the current contract without cause. If the superintendent’s contract is not extended because the board chooses not to do so, the superintendent is still a contracted employee with the district for the remaining years of the contract.

Here are the actions that should be taken regarding the current contract of the Superintendent of Schools. The board should:

• Decline to extend the current contract: By taking this action (or non-action as the case might be), the board can begin the process of renewed negotiations with the superintendent for the purpose of adding accountability performance measures authorized by the contract in Sections 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3.
• If the superintendent refuses to engage in such negotiations, he can maintain his position under the terms of the existing contract. Failing to extend a contract IS NOT the same action as terminating a contract.

However, the failure to extend a contract would send a clear signal that the community has reached a conclusion that higher standards of accountability for the superintendent are justified.

It should be recognized that an individual board member has the constitutional authority as a private citizen to retain legal counsel to advise him in his individual capacity regarding matters of law that would assist the member to be a more effective school board member.

Given the fact that the Katy I.S.D. school board as currently comprised may not be willing to retain legal counsel other than the district’s current legal firm to advise it on transitioning to a new standard of accountability, it is highly likely that an individual member is going to need to consult personal legal counsel to become fully informed on this matter.

As needed, citizens of this community should be prepared to raise the necessary funds to pay such legal costs in a manner that is fully legal to help guide one or more individuals who happen to be members of the school board.

A failure to proceed on this objective will reduce the chances of long term success of management reform. For reform members of the board to go against the superintendent, acquiescent board members, and the superintendent’s attorney without professional legal help to guide them would be foolhardy.

Finally, in this regard, there will come a day when the district has a new superintendent. When that transition comes, the board will either be prepared to negotiate a contract that serves the interests of the community or it will follow in what has become the stereotypical, industry-standard process of contracts that put the superintendent in control of his evaluators.

Enhanced Accountability For The Superintendent’s “Team”

Public education is the primary ‘first step’ in helping the community come to an understanding of just how lax the evaluation standards of the superintendent’s management team have become over time.

Most members of the superintendent’s top management team have the benefit of two-year contracts.

As a matter of principle, it should be unacceptable that classroom teachers are micro-managed with elaborate processes (often irrelevant to the realities of the burden of classroom teaching) while two-year management employees operating under less stressful and demanding circumstances are evaluated on far more subjective terms.

Until the accountability measures of the superintendent’s contract are improved, there will be no improvement in the standards of evaluation of his management team. However, here are the first steps in a longer process that must be pursued:

To facilitate a more detailed understanding of the need for this objective, a public information request has been submitted to Katy I.S.D. so that the general public can have access to information to help it put this issue in context.

Enhanced Accountability For Program Initiatives

The school district’s superintendent and management team routinely launch one program initiative after another under the guise of improving student academic performance. Unfortunately, successive school boards in the district have remained acquiescently silent in their determination to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs.

Further, the district has created positions called “Instructional Specialists.” These instructional specialists work with classroom teachers for the stated purpose of improving the delivery of instruction. Once again, there does not appear to be any objective standard that evaluates the effectiveness of this significant expenditure of money in a manner that directly affects the work environment of classroom teachers.

There are two parts to this operational principle: the first is program initiatives and the second involves those programs which directly intrude into the operational authority of the classroom teacher.

First:

The general public should understand that literally tens of millions of dollars in direct and resource-allocation pay for these program initiatives without ever answering the questions:

• Is there blind-study, empirical research to validate why these various programs should be used in Katy I.S.D.?
• Is there blind-study, empirical research to validate that these programs have demonstrably improved student academic performance in Katy I.S.D. student directly attributable to the implemented programs?
• What reports have been provided to past school boards purporting to show that any such program initiatives have improved student academic performance in Katy I.S.D. students?

While it is not feasible to retroactively require the school district to create reports validating the kind of information that the public is entitled to see for past efforts, it is essential that the district be required to produce such reports if they exist. Moreover, as the process of reform unfolds, it is absolutely essential to establish the fact circumstances about the rigor of accountability standards that are used to evaluate program initiatives designed to improve student academic performance.

To facilitate a higher level of public understanding, a public information request has been submitted to seek relevant information in the category.

Second:

The district allocates millions of dollars in staffing the position of “instructional specialist” under the guise of improving the performance of classroom teachers and student academic performance. Some classroom teachers who have addressed this matter privately express strong assessment of the actual productivity of the position of instructional specialists.

It is important for the school board to obtain objective analysis of the effectiveness of all taxpayer money that is spent. However, past school boards have routinely failed to demand reports providing independent analysis of programs such as those that created the position of instructional specialist.

Again, it is essential to use the Public Information Act to acquire factual data. Such a request has been submitted seeking the following information:

• The names of each employee who serves as an instructional specialist in Katy I.S.D.
• The subject/grade/curriculum content area of each instructional specialist.
• The assignment of campus(es) at which each instructional specialist works.
• Blank copies of all written instruments used to define the standards by which each instructional specialist is evaluated.
• Documentation showing the last year, grade, and campus assignment at which each instructional specialist served as a fulltime classroom teacher.

This is the starting point that classroom teachers, parents, and taxpayers have a reasonable right to expect members of the school board demand be accumulated for review and analysis.

Enhanced Accountability for Budget & Finance And Contracts

The worst of the trauma that surrounded last year’s budget crisis was essentially unnecessary. The school board could have made it vastly more orderly even though it was admittedly a stressful situation by it very nature. It came because the school administration was a poor communicator of the actual financial challenges confronting the district. Further, the school board members lack sufficient insight into these issues to provide leadership to the community and the staff that was essentially traumatized by the helter-skelter nature of what transpired.

Thus, school board members must become more knowledgeable about finances and contracts.

The recent discussions and actions by the administration regarding the proposed private contract involving the collection of delinquent and current taxes is a prime example. Two board members – Dr. Bill Proctor and Terry Huckaby – have at least blocked the ‘rubber stamp’ nature of the matter. The whole episode, regardless of its conclusion, points out the importance of the need for school board members to go beyond the superficial components of administrative recommendations.

Enhanced Accountability For Classroom Teachers’ Grievance Process

Serious concerns have been raised in the community regarding the treatment of professional staff especially including classroom teachers. There are distinct laws in place that protect the work environment of classroom teachers. In a right to work state such as Texas, these protections should not be confused with stories that often come from heavily unionized states that often make national publicity.

The school board should demand its administration produce a comprehensive statistical report providing an analysis of the kinds of grievances filed by classroom teachers the results that such grievances have produced. That alone, however, will be insufficient to evaluate the integrity of the due process afforded classroom teachers.

The school board should retain the services of an independent consulting firm or panel of independent experts to perform additional analysis including fully protected and confidential access to classroom teachers to gain their insights into the grievance process. This could include analysis of levels of intimidation that may be present encouraging teachers to refrain from using the grievance process.

Enhanced Public Accountability For School Board & Its Members

Successive school boards have voted to enact policies sharply curtailing the ability for individual members of the board to show leadership on issues they believe important to the public. Thus, the first step in restoring the board’s ability to hold its superintendent accountable begins with removing the handcuffs from the individual board members. Consequently, the board should:

• Allow a single member of the school board to place an item on the board’s agenda
• Remove all references in policies and procedures that restrict the ability of individual board members to have full opportunity to question administrators and ‘witnesses’ at school board meetings or workshops.

The protection from abuse here is quite simple. By allowing individual board members direct access to placing agenda items, board members can more easily focus public attention on issues of important. It should be noted that parliamentary procedures would still allow the majority of the school board to table or end debate on any issue by a formal record vote. As it is now, matters do not get to the board table and no board member has to go on the record to explain why.

As early as February, the school board should schedule a special meeting for the specific purpose of obtaining public input into at least one or more specific items:

• Standards by which the public believes the superintendent of schools should be evaluated as terms of his contract.
• Should school district administrators still be requires as a district policy to be notified within 45 days of the end of the school year as to whether their contracts will be renewed?
• Standards by which staff development training and program initiatives should be evaluated.

The board should use this special meeting as a template to develop the process more thoroughly and regularly to obtain direct public input rather than be so heavily dependent upon administrative-led committees that are carefully picked.

These changes would send a strong signal of the board’s decision to restore its rightful authority in this district.

Enhanced Accountability For Public, Staff Input Into Public Policy

The process by which the general public can communicate with the school board on agenda items at school board meetings must be expanded in compliance with the open meetings laws. As necessary, the school board should seek an attorney general’s opinion on the following matter although there is no reason ‘on the surface’ to believe the practice suggested here is contrary to the law.

Be assured that this passage is written by a person who is not an attorney and it is not submitted as legal advice. That’s the reason that should there be any doubt, the matter should be referred to the Attorney General of Texas.

On the surface, the Open Meetings Act requires the posting of specific items of business on the agenda of the school board consistent with posting requirements. The law does not apparently require that every individual who will address that item of business that is lawfully posted be included in the formal agenda.

It is common practice that various administrators or district consultants will be called to the podium or witness desk to discuss such items that have been posted. That is common practice.

Thus, there is no reason (at least on the surface) that an individual school board member should not be able to call his own expert witness or member of the public to answer his questions on any lawfully posted item on the agenda.

Right now, the public is consigned to the public presentation part of the meeting at which interaction between the board and the citizens is highly restricted. It does not appear that the law demands that this is the ONLY time that a citizen can address the school board.

If the administration can call X to the witness stand to discuss any item of business then the administration should have to go to the Attorney General of Texas to block a school board member calling Y to the witness stand even if Y was a private citizen.

This process alone would absolutely send a message to the administration that the board of trustees will no longer be muzzled. This is a ’sea change’ suggestion that will open up the process greatly.

Enhanced Accountability For Equal Educational Opportunities

There should be a great concern about educational and academic developments on the schools on the north and south sides of Interstate 10. Much of this position paper addresses issues academic accountability. This is the one component of The Path Forward document that will be mentioned here but developed more fully over time.