Educational leaders with a true commitment to excellence work with their school boards, district department and school leaders to build an evaluation process aligned to the district’s overall goals. A scorecard graphically organizes the content (e.g., aligned goals, aligned measures) in the process for transparency and feedback for continuous improvement. The ultimate goal is to produce better places for teachers to teach and employees to work, and improve student learning and parent satisfaction.
Just Start. A district’s strategic plan is used to develop accountable and aligned leader evaluations to drive performance. This first step aligns evidence-based leadership essentials to a district’s strategic plan to determine core measures of improvement and tools to use for evaluating leader performance.
Suppose a district’s focus is improved service; their vision: Efficient, effective, and friendly interactions with our district employees, staff, students, parents, and visitors.
On their scorecard, leaders will include goals aligned to this vision and will include multiple measures aligned with the goal(s). Such measures may include results from Employee Engagement, District Services, and Parent and Student Satisfaction. In turn, each of these measures have set targets, for example, “Raise the overall employee engagement score from the current mean rate of 3.86 (May 2014) to 4.06 (December 2014).”
Focus on Transparency. Creating a scorecard for each leader is an essential part of the assessment and evaluation process. At its core it is transparent to all employees and stakeholders. In addition, the scorecard includes multiple formative measures aligned to the goals of the district and guides leaders on areas working well and areas needing attention and improvement. It includes overall district approved goals aligned to the superintendent’s evaluation and a link to metrics that affect the achievement of the overall goals.
Evaluate and Communicate. The priorities and goals that department and school leaders include on their scorecard align to a district’s overall goals. This means while each leader’s evaluation varies according to his or her specific role and job responsibilities, the superintendent’s evaluation is aligned to the overall goals of the district, and all other leader evaluations are aligned to the superintendent evaluation. A scorecard helps visually communicate this alignment.
In addition to using the scorecard to communicate, districts must make concerted efforts to communicate their goals and actions—their messages—with stakeholders. Here’s an example from my Twitter feed yesterday from Mission Independent School District:
School districts with a true commitment to excellence value students improving their achievement levels, employees believing their leaders provide a good work environment and one where every staff member and every employee can be successful at the highest level, district employees providing service excellence, and parents feeling satisfied with their child’s education.
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Learn from and connect with high performing educational leaders, and discuss the use of a scorecard to set board and superintendent measures and cascade those across all levels of leadership in the district at Destination High Performance Orlando, February 9-10.
Photo clipped from Twitter feed of @StuderEducation.
Our mission at Studer Education is to help education systems achieve measurable results that produce positive outcomes in student achievement, employee engagement, support services, and financial efficiencies and productivity. Our goal is to help school systems provide students with a great place to learn, teachers with a great place to teach, and parents with confidence that their children are getting a great education. Follow us on Twitter at @StuderEducation and visit us online at http://studereducation.com. Studer Education is a division of Studer Group, ranked for the seventh straight year on the Best Small and Medium Workplaces by Great Place to Work® and a recipient of the 2010 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
Filed under: How to Lead…, Service Excellence, Who’s Engaged? Tagged: Communication, Continuous Improvement, Scorecard, Transparency 
