All of the responsibility, none of the authority

Last Modified: Friday, April 26, 2013 at 5:20 p.m.

Let’s talk business, shall we?

Here’s a hypothetical: Suppose you were hired to work in an investment firm and your job in your department is to show a certain monetary gain in a year’s time. If your department does well, you’ll get a raise. If it doesn’t, you may lose your job. Ouch. But hey, you’re highly educated in your field, receive training on new ideas all the time, are good at accepting criticism and able to lead well.

Now, let’s say you are not allowed to hire your employees. Instead, someone says to you, “Here are your employees. They just walked in off the street. Oh, and by the way, you can’t fire them if they don’t do well.”

What? This doesn’t sound good, but you think, “OK, I’m good at taking on challenges. I can do this.” Then they cram all 27 employees into a room meant for 20. Hmmm, this is getting worse, but you’re not scared.

Now, let’s say that four of those employees miss about a quarter of the entire year, either they’re sick, too lazy to get out of bed or just don’t feel like coming in to work. Let’s say another 10 are going through a divorce, and their minds just aren’t where they should be. Then, a few more don’t care too much about their job because they know they can’t get fired and they’ll be promoted eventually no matter their performance. That’s what’s happened in the past, so why bother?

That leaves you with about nine or 10 employees left. Out of those, only about five are truly qualified to be in your office, work really hard and want to impress their boss.

Would you want to be in charge of this particular group of people? Would you want to be paid based on your employees’ performance when you can’t pick and choose them and you can’t fire them for poor work performance?

Then why in the world are we doing this to Florida teachers? This type of performance pay system may work in corporate America where bosses can hire and fire. But is it fair to teachers?

They can’t pick and choose who they want in their classrooms. Not all children learn at the same rate. Some kids are below grade level before they get them. Some kids don’t care about their education, and neither do their parents. Teachers can’t fire kids when they fail to show up to school for weeks out of the school year. Teachers can’t control the insane amount of outside influences that affect their students every day.

So before you go around telling everyone that those lazy, overpaid teachers need to start being held accountable for their students’ performance on one test given at the end of the year, you may want to ask yourself: Would I want that job?

Jeanelle Wellhoner is a teacher at College Park Elementary School in Ocala.


▲ Return to Top