I was just asked something recently that I have never been asked before. Come to think of it, I don’t know of ANYONE who has ever been asked this. I was required by my prospective employer to produce the last two years’ performance evaluations in order for me to be considered for a teaching position in their district. (Having my principal’s and assistant principal’s recommendations weren’t enough? They were, after all, the authors of some of those performance evaluations. You don’t trust them either?)
Now, if you’re one of those teachers who has a reasonable, appreciative, supportive principal, you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal?” You might also stop to thank your lucky stars, swipe your hand across your brow, and whisper to yourself, “Whew!”
If you’re not, welcome to the club! Except, this is not really a club to which you want to belong. For two years, I had one of the nastiest principals on record. She mistook the performance evaluation as an instrument of torture and delighted in wielding it. I could do nothing to please this woman. If I had somersaulted backwards the length of the school hallway, it wouldn’t have been enough or properly executed. Everything I did was evaluated as “Developing.” It wasn’t the bottom-of-the-rung “Not Observed,” but it sure wasn’t “Proficient,” either. God forbid I should ever aspire to be “Accomplished” or “Distinguished.”
Lest you begin to think poorly of my teaching skills, I probably need to add at this point that most other teachers in the building were treated in a similar manner. I can also show you performance evaluations from other principals who gave me all top marks in every category, which I’m sure, if I were honest, I don’t deserve, either.
Post observation conferences with this principal were agony. The duration of one was actually 2 1/2 hours! I was tired of rolling over and taking the unfounded, destructive criticisms, so I came armed with an entire file case of student data and documentation, irrefutable evidence to the contrary. It took us that long to go through every point where she had marked me “Developing.” By the time we were through, I was exhausted, but she had relented on 21 different grades, changing them all to “Proficient.” I told my husband I was never so happy to be found barely adequate in all my life. Nobody ever told me I was going to need a law degree to prepare my defense of my teaching.
By the time the principal was forced to “retire,” the whole staff was suffering from a kind of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). It was all they could talk about for the next year. If the teachers had treated our students the way this principal treated us, we would have been fired in an instant. Even after we had a new principal, we would all cringe and stiffen whenever she walked into our classroom; even though we knew we were in better hands, we still habitually cowered like dogs who have been beaten and abused by their former owner.
So now, this principal’s legacy to me is not only affecting my past, it’s affecting my future. If I refuse to hand over the performance evaluations, I don’t get the job. However, if I do hand over the evaluations, I might not get the job either with less-than-stellar reviews.
Whose idea was this, anyway? I don’t know of any other profession that has required past performance evaluations before hiring someone. I’ve been wracking my brain; maybe you can think of one. Athletes are often hired on their records, but their records are public to begin with. These performance evaluations of mine are marked “Confidential” all over them, and my former school district wouldn’t release them to the prospective one for fear of being sued. We all thought they WERE confidential, just between us and our employers. I even had one colleague who used to say, “I don’t care what score the principal gives me as long as it’s good enough not to get fired.” You might want to rethink that strategy, friend. Evaluations are necessary and can be a valuable tool for growth when used properly, but they are not always used properly.
More than anything, I think my main objection to this additional step in the hiring process is that performance evaluations are so very subjective. I have often thought they reflect the evaluator every bit as much, if not more, than the one being evaluated. You can’t help how good your boss was at his/her job, and you shouldn’t be judged based on your boss’ performance. But that’s what can happen if you make the decision to hire someone based on their past performance evaluations.