How many members of our Congress are individuals of integrity?

Performance and Measurement in Three Areas

This is a brief piece of writing about performances and measuring them. There are areas in our society that could use more monitoring. Here, I want to mention three. The first is our Congress. How many members of our Congress are individuals of integrity (read honesty)? How many can you, the reader, name? My suggestion would be to take a survey near the end of each legislative year. The Congress itself would specify by secret ballot who is and who is not considered by peers to be a member with integrity. Certainly the peers are capable of doing this. Every member of our Congress cannot possibly be corrupted and/or “sold” to military and industrial (big business) interests. Constituents would see the results, of course, and then decide for themselves. Hence, more attention could be paid to Congressional member X whose survey results were less than desirable.

The second area is that of school principals. I realize that when a school has a very good principal who stays on for 20 to 25 years, everybody benefits. But how common is such a case? Too often, bad principals stay on for too long. After years of being an educator myself, I tend to think principals should have terms just as presidents, mayors, congress members, etc. The terms could be similar—3 or 4 years. Additionally, elections could be held each year, sort of like a “vote of confidence,” just to see which way the principal is headed—up or down. A good idea might be to experiment with letting the faculty of a particular school choose the principal for the new term.

The third area is the primary, middle school, and secondary faculties. Instead of our traditional practice of imposing practically all of the teachers on students, we could let them, the students, participate in determining which teachers to rehire. This practice already occurs in parts of South America, especially and, no doubt mostly, at private schools. Critics might say that students can gang up on a normally “good” teacher. In cases where I’ve seen that happen, it was a group of a mere 5 or 6 students. Never any large group. If numerous students are protesting the presence of a particular teacher, we can be fairly certain that something is “wrong” with the teacher or her/his methodology. I’ll never forget Dr. R., the principal. At year-end, he used to call meetings class by class and ask the students about their experiences during the year with teacher X or Y. Teacher X or Y, of course, would not be present. This practice gave him enough feedback to make her/his decisions regarding whom to rehire for the following year. At first, I felt wary of it. Later, I began to appreciate its value. After all, if a teacher isn’t connecting or “getting through” to her/his students, we must question the value that that teacher has for the students who must study with her/him for such a long time. I can speak from personal experience that when a teacher finds it very difficult to “love” her/his students in some way (proper way, of course), that teacher is wasting her/his time and students tend to reject her/him. Believe me, students know when you’re on the level with them (I never lie to my students.) and when you truly have their interests at heart. Thanks for reading.