A look at Supt. Authement's contract targets
The Rapides Parish School Board is expected to discuss Tuesday whether or not to offer Superintendent Nason "Tony" Authement a new contract after his expires this spring. A look at his original contract finds he has met some performance targets set for him, but others cannot be determined until more data is released from the state in December.
Authement entered a three-year contract with the board on April 27, 2013, at a "minimum base salary" of $160,000. The board is required to notify the superintendent 90 days prior to the expiration of his contract only if it intends not to renew, counsel James "Jam" Downs informed board members in October.
Board members Stephen Chapman and Gerald Crooks authored a motion to "consider and take action" on renewing Authement's contract at the November meeting. Chapman told The Town Talk he will propose a new four-year contract for Authement at his current salary.
In his original contract, the board set performance objectives and targets that Authement "shall meet or exceed." The objectives are broad and mostly refer to communication between the superintendent and the board or developing plans to improve the district.
The targets come with numbers attached.
According to his contract, Authement is to see that the district as a whole and all of its schools realize a percentage annual improvement in certain areas, beginning with the 2013-14 school year. Those areas are student achievement, student graduation rates and the percentage of teachers with an "effective" or "highly effective" performance rating.
Superintendent Authement: $60K raise 'rumor is absurd'
Student achievement
For student achievement, the board set the district's 2012 school performance score (99.9) as a baseline. The target set was to reach a score 3 points above that, bringing it up to the state average of 2012 (102.9), beginning in 2014-15. Then he is asked to increase the district score by 1 point each year after the 2015-16 school year.
The state Department of Education changed the formula for the grading system after 2012 from a 200-point scale to 150 points. On the new scale, Rapides schools kept its C in 2013 but the score appeared to drop significantly to 75.7. But converting it to the old scale shows an increase to 102.5, approaching the target the board set.
In 2014, the district score increased more than 10 points to an 86.4 B. While the score is a stark increase, it numerically still is lower than the baseline set by the board on the previous scale. The contract's school performance score targets will need to be adjusted to reflect current scoring.
The state is expected to release last year's scores in December.
State releases high school letter grades; see Rapides scores
Graduation rates
For district graduation rates, the board set a 0.8-percent growth rate as a baseline, which was the district's rate of growth in 2011-12. It asked Authement to increase overall graduation rates by 2 percent as well as for a 3-percent increase in rates for schools rated C or D by the state and 2-percent increase at F-schools.
In 2012-13, the graduation rate for Rapides dropped from the baseline of 70 percent to 67 percent. It went back up to 72.5 percent in 2013-14..
The 2014-15 "preliminary" district graduation rates are be used as the performance target, according to the contract, likely expecting those to be released by the time contract discussions began. But the slow release of PARCC scores have delayed the release of school performance scores for schools with grades below ninth, and 2014-15 graduation rates are not available yet.
Looking at the most recent available rates for Rapides, 2013-14, the graduation rate of 72.5 percent is 2.5 percentage points over the baseline set in Authement's contract by the board. That rate meets the 2-percent increase target set by the board.
After the initial increase, the board asked for continual growth, moving graduation targets up 1 percent each year after the 2014-15 school year both for the overall parish rate and for the C, D and F performing schools.
La. to look for ways to reduce testing
Teacher ratings
The contract also addressed the percentage of teachers with an "effective" or "highly effective" performance rating, calling for the baseline to be set from 2013-14 figures.
In 2013-14, Compass evaluation results showed 47 percent of Rapides teachers were rated "effective" and 45 percent were rated "highly effective." Authement's target then is to "endeavor" to raise that by 5 percent each year.
More recent figures have not been released by the state yet.