Evaluations are difficult everywhere.

One of the common complaints I hear is that of "not being able to fire bad teachers." It comes only slightly more often than "Teachers make too much money" and "Why are there so many bad teachers?" What we have here is a difficulty of evaluating teachers by administration, but I figure it's more than that.

It's that evaluation is a bitch, and it's not just teachers. It's everyone and everywhere.

When you complain that teachers make too much money, you are subconsciously saying that it's too much money for someone that bad, meshing the top-of-the-scale salary with the bottom-of-the-scale ability and assuming that it's the same person (it rarely is).

The anti-collective bargaining group wants to be able to pay the superstars at a superstar rate and pay the slugs with a pink slip.

The problem is, of course, figuring out who is who.

Years ago, I had a terrible dentist. He drilled holes everywhere and messed up my teeth pretty badly. There was no way to find out if he was bad or not before I sat in the chair. My current dentist insists that the teeth that are deteriorating under the old dental work would have done so anyway but it's stunning how well the tooth right next to it is doing under his work. Thankfully I have dental insurance and I'm getting a lot of this work done.

You will never hear a dentist talk ill of another - it's always your fault for not brushing or flossing enough.

Mrs. C. had an even worse dentist experience and has had to undergo a great deal of expensive repair. Lawsuits finally brought the guy out of his office but it turned out that the dental review board didn't dare state publicly that they thought he wasn't up to snuff. They didn't want "to turn on one of their own."

I've finally found a decent mechanic, no thanks to any review board or any kind of Craigslist or Angie's-list or State Cert Panel. Certifications line the walls of every shop in town, but mostly they suck.

When we look around, we find that every job is filled with average workers. Some are good and some are terrible but most are just okay. Teachers are no different.

A local first responder just got his fifth DUI.
Contractors are legendary for their variability and lets not make any cracks about plumbers. ;-)
The writers for the paper are so-so and don't always compare favorably with the students who write for the high-school section.
Politicians? We won't go there.
Doctors? Lawyers?  Used Car Salesmen?

How do we judge thee? Let me count the ways.

Teachers judge teachers very differently than admins do. Parents use a different yardstick and the taxpayer with no kids and an attitude about taxes and education still another.