Editor:
I was saddened to read that school superintendent Deborah Palmer and the Sunshine Coast Teachers' Association president Jenny Garrels believe that a merit-based system of placing teachers is unworkable (Coast Reporter, May 21).
I'm sure we all remember life-changing teachers who taught with passion and woke within us a desire to learn more. They are the glory of the system and it is disappointing to be reminded that as the school system shrinks, such teachers will sometimes be replaced by teachers with more experience, but less passion.
Having worked in merit-based companies, I know it is workable. Palmer and Garrels agree on one thing: merit is difficult to quantify, which means that mistakes will be made. But a system could be devised that got it right much of the time. If you accept that the true basis for selecting teachers is merit and that seniority serves as an objective proxy for ability, the task becomes to devise a measurement system for merit that gets it right more often than seniority. In my workplaces, the system was simple, if subjective: managers gathered feedback from everyone to rank employees. As both ranker and rankee, I can say that it worked imperfectly but well.
A bigger fear about subjective merit-based systems is that, in the context of a personality clash, a manager can treat an employee unfairly by manipulating their merit ranking. This is a real risk.
I don't have much hope that teachers will put aside their fear of mistreatment in the interests of the students. I'm comforted by the fact that at least seniority is not inversely correlated with ability.
John Klippenstein
Roberts Creek
