FW: Comparing Professionals

["Lucy Zoe" <lucyzoe@moscow.com>]

In the event there are those interested in this thread, here's
my response to Sunil Ramalingam.
Lucy Zoe

-----Original Message-----
From: Lucy Zoe [mailto:lucyzoe@moscow.com] 
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 4:12 PM
To: 'Sunil Ramalingam'
Subject: RE: Comparing Professionals


Dale wrote,
"Rather, there should be a system of merit pay for teachers: People who 
perform better should be rewarded, and this gives everyone the incentive
to 
improve performance."

Sunil wrote:
How will performance be measured?  I don't disagree with the concept,
but I 
wonder how to measure performance when one considers all the variables.
Do 
we look at how their students do? An advanced placement teacher is going
to 
look good in terms of the performance of  her students, when compared to

other teachers, but does that mean that she's necessarily performing
better 
than the other teachers?

Lucy writes:
In other professions, pay for performance is difficult to measure. For
example, take the customer service industry. Within that industry I'll
choose financial institutions. Let's say the customer's expectation is
to receive: 1. Error free delivery  2. Clear and concise information  3.
Timely delivery. The customer must have a method of notifying the FI if
their expectation is satisfied, exceeded, or not met. The data is
consolidated and used to evaluate each individual delivering customer
service. Now granted, it's a lot of work. However, if you say you
deliver "quality" customer service, it must be measurable by the
customer. And...if you want to employ people to deliver that "quality"
customer service, they must have a clear understanding of what is
expected. 

Now let's take a look at teachers in K-12. In this example, the parent
should determine the expectations. You put together several groups of
parents and have them come up with a set of expectations for each grade
level. In the older grades, the parents will likely solicit additional
input from their child. Each teacher is then is evaluated based on their
ability to meet the expectation of the parents. 

I've also found that including the person(s) *delivering* the
performance in the expectation process is valuable. However, the
*deliverer's* usually set expectations for themselves far *higher* than
those benefiting from the performance. This often results in
unreasonable expectations that cannot be accomplished. It's crucial that
the customer and the person being rated participate in the process.

The problem, as I see it, is that far too many parents abdicate their
role as customer when it comes to their children's education. They
cheerfully send their kids to school believing that the government is
looking out for the best interests of the child. Clearly there are
parents who are part of the process, but I would hazard a guess that a
large segment of parents do not participate in their children's
education. 

I submit to you that "customers" are very savvy now days. They have
*very* high expectations. Why shouldn't customers have the same *high*
expectations of the teachers educating their children, and shouldn't the
teacher's performance be measured based their ability to satisfy,
exceed, or not meet those expectations. If you go to a restaurant and
your waiter is rude, your dinner is cold, and your bill is high, chances
are you will voice your dissatisfaction with the service you received,
and you would exercise your customer service rights and go somewhere
else. 

Just a thought...perhaps parents should have alternatives if teachers
fall short of those expectations.

Lucy Zoe