Pay vs. Performance: Is the money right for your superintendent?

By Annie Reed and Brian Hudson
Suburban Life Publications
Wed Sep 23, 2009, 12:20 PM CDT

In many communities, school district superintendents are among the highest-paid public employees, pulling in close to $200,000 or more in salary and benefits.

Yet despite a decade-old law, some taxpayers are still hindered from seeing how their school boards review superintendent job performance, according to a recent review of contracts.

Three months ago the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the public has the right to see superintendents’ contracts, including the goals that school districts are required to set for them.

After the court’s decision, Suburban Life Publications collected and reviewed some three dozen superintendent contracts from suburban Cook, DuPage and Kane counties. The analysis suggests that in many districts, the contract’s performance goals — which Illinois schools boards must set according to a state law — do not have the teeth lawmakers intended.

Since 1998, a state law has required that multi-year superintendent contracts be “performance based” and set goals. The idea was that salary and compensation should be closely tied to improvements in the district.

While many school boards use the goals to chart a clear course for the district’s chief administrator, at least several set only broad or vague objectives — in some cases one or two sentences that amount to little more than a job description.

Measuring superintendent performance against such indistinct goals can be difficult, at least for observers. School boards regularly review superintendent performance, but it is done in closed-door meetings — which means in some cases taxpayers can be shut out of directly evaluating their schools’ head administrator.

EVALUATION

Given that superintendent contracts all achieve essentially the same purpose, the districts’ agreements can be considerably distinct. After all, the contracts tend to be written by different lawyers and legal counsels, and even in the rigid confines of a legal document, an author’s pen can show through.

Likewise, the 34 districts that Suburban Life Publications looked at take varying stance on superintendent performance goals.

The most common approach was to list roughly a half-dozen goals, ranging from the broad — “curriculum review” appeared often in some form or another — to specific district initiatives.

Some districts were more precise than that and included a dozen or more specific goals, indicators and the actions taken toward them, updating the goals each year and making them accessible to the public.

In St. Charles Community Unit School District 303, officials compiled Superintendent Donald Schlomann’s goals for 2008-11 in a report that details how a goal has been met or what plans are underway to meet them in the future.

Some districts’ contracts, however, were scarce on goals.

Sandra Doebert is superintendent of Lemont High School District 210. When her five-year contract was signed in 2007, it included both a performance goal and an indicator of success. But neither are very specific.

The 19-word, one-sentence goal says Doebert must implement and evaluate curriculum improvements “determined to foster improved academic achievement.” She must report to the board on those improvement programs by June 2011.

In Glen Ellyn’s Community Consolidated School District 89, Superintendent John Perdue has just three goals in his contract. He is required to evaluate student performance, review both the curriculum and instructional services and report his findings on all of them. The goals are completed with the last requirement — the report to the school board.

District 89’s school board president, Lori Gaspar, admits that the contract goals are nebulous. But that does not mean the board doesn’t regularly define and direct Perdue’s job, she said.

At several points during the year, Perdue and the school board meet to discuss job performance, Gaspar said. Once a year, the board members each offer a list of critiques. The lists are compiled and, after synching them with the objectives for the entire school district, lead to the superintendent’s yearlong goals.

Administrators in Lemont District 210 also create yearly goals, which are compiled in an operational plan, which defines the district’s work for the upcoming year, School Board President Beverly Marzec said in an e-mail. In addition to Doebert’s end-of-the-year review, the board checks up on the plan twice each year.

The year-to-year process is more flexible than creating goals just once when the contract is signed, Gaspar said. Being too specific could hem in the superintendent.

“It’s not really practical to put every goal in the contract,” said Mike Kiser, a Downers Grove-based education lawyer.

While it might be more flexible, it also allows for less public scrutiny.

Most districts conduct an annual or quarterly review of their superintendent, but it is done in closed-door meetings. Discussions about personnel are not covered by open meetings laws — regardless of whether the contract includes specific goals, Kiser said.

Still, detailed contract goals give insight into superintendent progress.

In Downers Groves’ Maercker School District 60, for instance, Superintendent Catherine Berning’s contract last year included, in an appendix, a spreadsheet listing 15 goals and what steps were taken each quarter to address them.

But it would be difficult for the public at large to review superintendents directly, said Gaspar, the school board president in District 89, because so much of it is based in interaction with educators, administrators and the elected officials.

Instead, she said people should sound off on the schools and the district as a whole — as well as their elected officials.

“How are they going to evaluate John Perdue? They don’t work with him on a daily basis,” she said. “But they certainly can rate the district and the schools. … If the school district wasn’t doing well, it would reflect on John Perdue.”

ACCOUNTABILITY

The 1998 “performance-based contract” law gives school districts wide latitude in how to define a performance goal, said U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert, R-13th, of Hinsdale, who co-sponsored the bill when she represented the 81st district in the General Assembly.

She said the goal of the contract was not “vague or watered-down performance measures” but to ensure that top administrators are being held accountable.

So is that happening? Education attorney Kiser said he’s not so sure. “The law doesn’t make a lot of difference in my opinion.”

This year, Illinois lawmakers passed another law requiring transparency for superintendent contracts, this one targeting compensation. By Oct. 1 each year, districts must publish reports online showing not only salary, but also benefits, perks and bonuses for all administrators.

“We are trying to demand greater accountability,” said state Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-24th, of Hinsdale, who co-sponsored the bill, “to make the evaluation of a superintendent’s worth and cost more transparent to taxpayers and school board members.”

Dillard, who is running for governor, said he might also push for further changes to the 1998 legislation.

“If we determine there is no basis for a good evaluation of a superintendent’s goals or values, we will do what we often do, which is massage or enhance the law we passed,” he said.

“One mandate I will give (school boards) is to make them more accountable.”

VIEW CONTRACT AND GOALS CREATED FOR YOUR LOCAL SUPERINTENDENTS

COMPARE COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS OF TOP DISTRICT ADMINISTRATORS

READ Q&A WITH YOUR SCHOOL BOARD OFFICIALS ON HOW THEY SET GOALS