Is Superintendent Joseph Wise Really Doing a Good Job?

[rbirds]

FTU has been discussing Education Superintendent Wise's evaluation over the past few days. On 8/6, FTU http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/080607/met_189291810.shtml focused on the broad differences between the five white board members' evaluation of Wise and the two black board members' evaluation.

Five board members rated him highly on 49 criteria, scoring fours or higher on the five-point scale from unsatisfactory to excellent.

Chairwoman Vicki Drake is one of two board members who assigned the superintendent an overall rating of "excellent," two others rated him "highly effective."

"Dr. Wise has served the district well and has the vision and knowledge to move this district to a new level of excellence," Drake wrote.

The board's two black members criticized Wise for marginalizing people who disagree with him and said he has often painted their dissenting voices as a racial issue. Betty Burney and Brenda Priestly Jackson gave him overall ratings of "unsatisfactory."

Every board member but Priestly Jackson met personally with Wise to discuss the evaluations.

On Thursday, Burney angrily walked out of her meeting with Wise when he challenged her to get the majority of the seven-member board to vote him out, she said Friday.

Then Ron Littlepage jumps into the controversy  http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/080707/opl_189408348.shtml, suggesting that the two dissenting board members

Get over it.

and

Continuing your loose talk about it's time to find a new superintendent is the last distraction this city needs with public schools set to open in two weeks.

Following Littlepage's piece and a great deal of public discussion about Wise's aggressive practices and his dismissal of the bad evaluations by Brenda Priestly Jackson and Betty Burney, Board member Tommy Hazouri writes a letter to the editor on 8/8  http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/080807/opl_189591482.shtml suggesting

that a disproportionate share of attention will be paid to the few areas where a need for improvement is noted. Such a mistake could threaten the spirit and the success of the assessment tool we have worked hard to implement.

How should we look at this brouhaha?  Are the evaluations by two of the seven school board members just statistical outliers or are they significant indicators of a failed service to the minority communities in Jacksonville? 

Should we and the dissenting board members do as Littlepage suggests and just "get over it"?  Are the two poor evaluations dropped from consideration solely because they represent the minority view and not the majority view of board members?

Is Hazouri right about the evaluation process and the very low number of goals Wise has made significant progress on: that this evaluation is only the beginning of the process and we have to give him the necessary time to be successful?

[jbm32206]

Wise, although I feel his overall intentions for the district are good...he does have a smart-mouthed way of expressing himself, and should you speak out against him, he is vindictive. There's also the very real fact that there's 15 failing schools under his command...not good, not good at all. He was out of line during the interview with Burney, who ended up giving him a more realistic standing.

The two low evaluations should not have been dropped, not at all...and board members like Drake and Broner need to be voted out of there because all they do is kiss up to the superintendent, and have long since lost a realistic view of what the district needs are. I just don't feel that the high scoring evaluations were realistic, and highly inflated. I believe the statement of the low evaluations being of the minority view, says it all...and I'm not talking the few, either.

Personally, we shouldn't just get over it...there's serious issues that need to be addressed, and Wise is in fact, the one that's ultimately held responsible and needs to answer for them. I also feel that he's been in this position long enough for a fair evaluation...and sorry to say that the majority of them weren't objective in their results.

[Skot David Wilson]

I guess this line of discussion vindicated Betty, Brenda, and Tommy.....  Drake and Broner really are out of touch I think... they were over three years ago over Normandy, they all were when they put Wise in instead of Pratt-Dannals, and have been until Tuesday when they showed him the door.
He may be a decent guy sometimes to some people, and very smart, but INTEGRITY (use a dictionary) means basically "ones whole being" in the context we need to discuss, and in what we need to expect in someone we trust to provide for the educational needs of our kids.
The posts above are prophetic...