Photo: From the May 2010 issue of LEO Matters
May 20, 2010
by Stevens Wandmacher
One of the most important parts of the current UM-LEO contract is Article XIX—Performance Evaluation. This article establishes the requirements for and nature of our annual reports, interim evaluations, and major reviews. In laying out the major review process, the article calls for “Employees to provide evidence of high quality instruction that fosters students’ intellectual development.” On the surface this sounds great: who wouldn’t find this expectation for what we should be doing and how well we should be doing it reasonable?
But if we scratch beneath the surface, ambiguities emerge. What type of evidence is needed and how is quality measured? The contract doesn’t provide enough clarity on these questions. As it turns out, the criteria that constitute evidence for the evaluation of lecturers’ performance, as well as the benchmarks for level of achievement, are not as well defined as first appears. Furthermore, as recent experience has revealed in the case of Kirsten Herold’s dismissal, the contract
provides no protection against shifting, or even hidden, criteria that can undermine a lecturer’s success in the review process.
The contract does call for the creation of “specific written criteria” by each unit and provides some “general criteria” that the specific criteria used in evaluation could address, such as “command of the subject matter” and “ability to communicate and achieve appropriate student learning goals.” It also speaks to the benchmarks for evaluating teaching quality, here too in only the most general terms: the “[p]rocess and procedure of the evaluation should be consistent with commonly accepted standards within The University of Michigan for evaluating teaching.” Not many units, however, have provided criteria and benchmarks of the sort that can be used by lecturers
to guide them in fulfilling their job requirements or by evaluators to
make fair judgments.
To rectify this problem, in the current negotiations the Bargaining Team has asked for stronger, more precise language regarding evaluation criteria and benchmarks. The Administration clearly is uncomfortable with this request. They tell us that they need a lot of flexibility because it is tricky to establish the criteria for a lecturer’s performance and to measure it. One wonders what is especially “tricky” about this as compared with that for tenure-track faculty members — unless the Administration’s claim belies the value that it places on the teaching quality of tenure- track faculty members. Indeed, the claim gives the LEO Bargaining Team pause, since flexibility can lead to a lack of transparency in the review process, as well as to inconsistency in the application of criteria and benchmarks.
Despite this difference in views, we believe that positive headway
can be made in negotiations. The Bargaining Team is exploring other avenues toward building transparency and consistency. One is that in addition to clear, written communication of criteria and benchmarks to a lecturer, if some criteria are weighted more heavily than others, this differential must also be laid out so that lecturers know where to focus their efforts and what adjustments are needed for them to meet the unit’s expectations. Another avenue is the “no blindsiding” provision. This provision calls for a supervisor to inform a lecturer in a timely fashion when a performance
problem has been identified so that the lecturer has an opportunity to correct the problem.
The principles of transparency and consistency are critical to the concept of fair performance evaluation. As with employees of any organization outside of academia, lecturers should know if their performance is not measuring up—and in time to do something about it. It is unfair not only to a lecturer to conceal evidence of sub par performance but also to the students that would benefit from the improved performance. Transparency and consistency help ensure fair performance evaluation for lecturers and high quality instruction for students.
by Jim Anderson
Back in 2002, when LEO was being organized, I sometimes talked with prospective members who felt reasonably secure in their jobs. In some cases, their sense of security was based on economics: never having gotten a pay raise, even after years of teaching, these lecturers knew that their department would save nothing by replacing them with a new hire and therefore would be unlikely to bother. Some felt protected by being institutionally invisible. “I’m not even on their radar,” a part-time lecturer once told me, with as much relief as indignation.
However, the usual reason that lecturers gave for feeling secure in their jobs was that they worked in a “good department” with “good leadership.” They felt that if they did a good job, they would continue to have a job. They recognized that not all departments were good, but those were the breaks.
“Yes,” I’d say, “you’re lucky to be in good department now. But that can change when leadership changes. You need job security based on a contract, not on luck and personalities.” I believed this in 2002 when we were forming LEO and in 2003-2004 when we were fighting for our first contract. I still believe it today, but experience has shown me the difficulties of achieving solid job protections through a labor contract. LEO has achieved much in this area, but our work is not finished.
In the current contract there are three ways that a lecturer can be involuntarily separated from his or her job. First, the lecturer can be fired as the result of a disciplinary procedure. Second, the lecturer can be laid off for lack of work (due to low course enrollment, budget cuts, or program changes). Third, the lecturer can be failed in a major review and thus not renewed for another fixed-term appointment.
In regard to being fired, the contract requires that due process be followed and a just cause standard be met. These are high bars, and neither side in the current negotiations has proposed to lower them. In regard to being laid off, the current contract unfortunately allows for some subjective and ad hoc decision-making by administrators. Seniority comes into play only if the unit decides that the lecturers who might be laid off or recalled are virtually equal in “expertise, ability, and performance” (EAP) as these qualifications are related to the teaching position in question. In short, EAP trumps seniority. LEO has rightly targeted EAP as a concept in need of definition: our goal in bargaining is to establish a more objective process for determining the relative EAP of lecturers when layoff or recall decisions must be made.
In regard to being failed in a major review, the current contract attempts to define a fair process and establish reasonable evaluation criteria. But, as with the layoff procedure, the review process falls short of adequately protecting lecturers from capricious, unfair, and idiosyncratic decision-making in the guise of academic judgment. In negotiations, LEO is working to strengthen the protections for lecturers in performance evaluation. We seek to prevent “blind-siding,” in which a lecturer is hit with negative performance information late in the review process when a supervisor could have provided much earlier feedback about and help in solving the problem. We also seek to clarify and enhance the remediation process that may follow from a
failed major review. Our proposals would limit remediation reviews to only those issues raised in the remediation plan and give lecturers who have presumption of renewal the option of appealing negative remediation decisions to a committee outside their department.
Ironically, the Union’s success at winning regular raises and greater institutional recognition for lecturers has made the need for solid job security even more urgent. Today, units can save money by replacing a long-term lecturer with a new hire. And we are definitely on their radar!