When a "B+" Becomes an "A" (Evaluations, part two)

The Dogs--"A Decent Warning" (mp3)

I'm a B+ guy, maybe better than that in some areas, certainly worse in others. And I'm not talking about grades; I'm talking about the kinds of ratings, real or imagined, that come up in everyday life--marriage, friendship, work, etc.

For example, I'm pretty good at my job. B+ good. I might even be the best person at this moment to do my particular job, but I doubt it. And even if true, I'm still a B+. But I get told (in any number of ways that have nothing to do with salary) that I'm A good. You know, really, really, good. Indispensable. Vital cog in the machine and all that.

It isn't true. It's just what's convenient.

Certainly, I have enough self-awareness to be able to do a basic self-assessment. No false modesty necessary. I work at at B+ school full of B+ people. I'm one of those. I have more ideas than most, but not brilliant ideas, just seat-of-the-pants clever ideas. I can create something pretty workable at the last minute under pressure. I can rev up enough personality most days to make the school day more pleasant for our students. But that's it. I'm certainly not shaping pedagogy on a national scale or in a way that anyone should follow.

For whatever reason, we're none of us at the absolute top of our game. It may be institutional. A conservative, Southern school is simply not likely to be on the cutting edge of anything, and we're not. We're good, in some ways very good, but not great. That is no dis. Or it may be that for similar reasons, our school does not attract the absolute top candidates that are out there. It really doesn't matter, we make it work, and what I'm really after is for you to buy my basic point about the B+=A phenomenom that is going on, not my casual critique of where I work.

Are you really an A? Or are you a B+ like me? Are you super Dad or pretty good Dad? Are you great at your job or is it simply that whoever evaluates your performance doesn't want to get into the areas where you could stand to improve and that this lulls you into a sense of unsubstantiated self-satisfaction? To do otherwise is hard work, difficult work, threatening work. And that's my point: nobody wants to do that anymore.

Or is it that you are better than the people around you and that you are elevated beyond where you should be because of that knowledge? Are you a big fish in a small pond? Or do you have the power to keep anyone from really giving you a hard look? Either way, same result.

I'm deeply disturbed by this. This is another of those indicators, for me, of the decline of our country. How can we reform something as important as education when we can't take a hard look at what isn't working and when we can't have frank talks with each other about what we can do to get better? It's much easier to focus on logistics and pressing problems than it is to try to sweep an entire institution or country into major reform.

Because it isn't just education. We don't want to have to do the dirty work of evaluation anywhere. Politicians don't read bills. Citizens don't read politicians. We cede the argument, and therefore the evaluation, to whomever grabs the conch, to whomever gets control of the spin, to whomever owns the message. We listen to B+ music, celebrate B+ products, live B+ lives. If we can admit that even.

We have become so blunt as a society that the only kind of "evaluation" that we understand is winning and losing. We have reduced to a national language where things are either "awesome" or they "suck." The nuanced middle (my own brilliant analysis of "kinda suck" aside) is of little interest to anyone except a few remaining thoughtful journalists and the hosts of comedy news shows. And their voices are easily minimized or ignored.

And so, we want to believe that we are an "A" country when we are really a "B+." If we can win in whatever specific ways are currently important--wars, diplomacy, atomic dominance, technology, Christianity--then we can demonstrate, if only to ourselves, that we're still on top. God forbid that one of our politicians should suggest that we are not. That's not unAmerican, by the way. I'm certainly not claiming that there's a different "A" country out there. I'm just saying that we're no longer it.

Has there been in history anything that has been more dangerous than convincing a group of people, or even one person, that they are something that they are not?

I think there's a different kind of danger now. That a country, our country, that the world needs to play a powerful, positive role can no longer play that role because it is a diminished version of its former self, but it doesn't know it. I guarantee that if we are in that situation now, everyone else will figure it out before we do. We will be the last ones to see it. And rather than acknowledge it, we will look amongst ourselves to find out who we can blame. And because we think we are ''A"s, we won't be able to see our "B+"ness, will have to pin it all on those someone elses who didn't make the grade.

Evaluations (part one)

Ivana XL--"Nobody Does It Better" (mp3)

Down here there's just winners and losers and don't get caught on the wrong side of that line.
--Bruce Springsteen

Is the art of evaluation gone? Has the tough analysis, the honest recommendation, the timeline for improvement been lost? Or have we lost not the ability to take a hard look at something and offer suggestions for improvement, but instead lost the fire in the belly necessary to carry it out?

On the one side, those who do the evaluating do not want to be perceived as the "bad guy," while those who get evaluated are so thin-skinned that they couldn't take the criticism if it ever came. We can't talk to power, and power can't talk to us, certainly not in any meaningful fashion.

Last week, our school had an accreditation team of school administrators from a variety of other Southern independent schools come take a look at our mission and our programs and our 5-year plan for self-improvement. They were a genial bunch, and I enjoyed talking with them on a couple of occasions. But when it came time for them to issue their final report, at least in its oral form, they had no recommendations of any kind to offer us. Even our headmaster, who enjoys things going smoothly and without conflict as much as possible, seemed a bit befuddled, at least initially, by this turn of events.

Those of us who draw our personal work energies from a constant awareness of the many and varied ways that our school needs to improve could not have been more disheartened. The critiques around the water cooler or over a beer need a little bit of validation once in awhile, some tiny support for the notion that conditions in the workplace need to get better. Heck, some of those critics wouldn’t mind being told that they need to get better!

There are many ways to process this:

1) We're that good. A fellow administrator told the faculty that the visiting team "had never seen a school so clear about its mission."
2) Our headmaster has just been elected president of the governing organization partly responsible for the accreditation that just took place.
3) It was easier for the team to rubber stamp what we are doing and to be able to return home to their own schools and issues without having to give us a real challenge.

My money is on the third possibility. Why not just head back home with a pat on the back and a few bland platitudes? After all, the members of the team are competitors, if not for actual students, then certainly for prestige and reputation. But, beyond that, there’s also a kind of “you’re a professional and I’m a professional and I’m not going to try to tell you how to do your job” kind of mentality at play.

And yet. I sat in one of the meetings, the last one actual before the oral non-report was delivered to the top dogs, and I heard them say, because I brought it up, that the students they interviewed thought that we are behind technologically and the parents they interviewed thought the same thing. And all of this because I told them that much of the faculty thinks we’re behind technologically (my comments undermining the colleague to my left who was towing the party line).

So where’s the recommendation? Where’s the simple statement, regardless of the plan we may have for the future or the philosophy that we articulate: “You guys need to get up to speed. Now. As an immediate priority.”

But this circumstance is in no way limited to this one event. Our situation is small potatoes. Especially when a CEO who screws up a major corporation gets shuffled out the door with a severance package larger than the yearly economy of a Central American country. Especially when a coach who has failed is still getting paid, perhaps still working for the organization, long after he has been removed from his position. Especially when we have no way to look our leaders in the eye and say, “You aren’t doing what you said you would do.”

Put me squarely in the camp of being for hurt feelings, bruised egos, performance ultimatums and good old callings onto the carpet. Let me lobby for performance reviews that mean something and for societal criticisms that let us know the full implications of our failings. But that has to happen globally--some mid-level guy can't really tell it like it is if everyone else is going to traffic in platitudes and the mildest of recriminations? Otherwise, how can we even try to get better?