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Daeschner: Superintendent of the Year?

(Bowling Green, Kentucky) – The Bluegrass Institute has serious reservations about the selection of Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Stephen Daeschner as the commonwealth’s “Superintendent of the Year” by the Kentucky Association of School Administrators (KASA).

The district overseen by this superlative superintendent contains 10 high schools in which more than 75 percent of the students failed to achieve reading proficiency in 2004, according to data collected from various sources and published at www.kentuckyalliance.org. Yet these same schools graduate an average of 65 percent of those students. Daeschner presides over this inexcusable disparity of children failing to achieve proficiency in critical areas and the number of diplomas being granted.

If Daeschner represents the best of Kentucky’s public-school superintendents, then the KASA’s award is as meaningless as some of the diplomas he has handed out through the years.

Fifty-seven of Jefferson County’s 130 schools failed to meet federal standards during the 2004-05 school year, up from 55 schools that did not meet the previous year’s requirements. As Daeschner was being granted the award, more than 30,000 students within his charge were languishing in failing schools. Is this what we should expect from the best superintendent in the state?

“In 1995, Daeschner’s district claimed five of Kentucky’s 10 lowest-performing schools as measured by ACT scores,” said Richard Innes, education analyst with the Bluegrass Institute. “A full decade later, the district claimed seven of the 10 lowest-performing schools. What criterion does the KASA use in determining outstanding performance by a public-school superintendent?”

Even some JCPS school board members have pointed out Daeschner’s failure to address some of the most critical issues facing the district, including a persistent achievement gap between black and white students and the poor performance by the district’s middle schools, where 35 percent of students scored novice (the lowest of four categories) in math this year.

“Perhaps the association should do some homework before handing out next year’s award,” said Jim Waters, Director of Policy and Communications for the Bluegrass Institute. “Only administrators who exemplify the kind of leadership that all superintendents should emulate deserve such an accolade.”

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