Does this sound familiar? Dr. Best, principal of Elm Street School, recommends nonrenewal of Susan Wright's contract. Ms. Wright disagrees. Their disagreement soon finds its way to two other desks. Ms. Wright goes to the union. Dr. Best goes to the superintendent.

Wright is wrong, according to Dr. Best. Best is the worst and he's had it in for me ever since I started teaching, according to Ms. Wright. Charges of ineptness and personality conflicts are traded. Union and management are unsuccessful in resolving the dispute. The union believes Ms. Wright. The superintendent believes Dr. Best. Loyalty triumphs.

The inevitable result will be hard feelings between union and management officials. One will win; the other will lose. Trust, if it exists, will be undermined because firing teachers is an extremely combustible element in labor-management relations.

What's wrong with this picture is not that a teacher is dismissed for poor practices. The problem is that neither the union nor management has reliable information about Ms. Wright's performance, but that won't stop either from a confrontation that will have negative ramifications beyond one teacher's classroom performance.

In this example, Dr. Best has acted decisively, but that is the exception, not the rule. School management more often avoids dealing with those who are inept or those who should not be teaching at all. Their performance is marked "needs improvement," a recommendation that is vague, not helpful, and serves as an excuse for avoidance. The result is that worst-case termination scenarios fuel confrontations between union and management that in turn interfere with badly needed collaborative school improvement projects.

Why the Traditional Model Doesn't Get Results

• Principals are busy. Time is a key element in mentoring and evaluation.
• Often principals are required to assist and evaluate outside their area of academic expertise.
• Reliability and consistency among evaluators is compromised because too many principals evaluate, they are seldom monitored, and they often use different standards and procedures. Consistency is a problem and the lack of it usually rules out contract termination.
• Annual evaluations tend to result in perfunctory reviews.
• Procedural due process is important when dismissals are appealed. Often the facts and substance of a case do not prevail because the process was flawed.
• Collaborative efforts and solutions are usually absent.
• Teachers continue to think that a colleague's poor performance is someone else's problem.

Traditional evaluation does have its rewards. It is cheap unless someone sues. It does not disturb the authority model school administrators have come to rely on. And it gets the same results year after year. There is some comfort in that for those who are not risk-takers.