The recent mass layoff of the entire staff at a high school in Central Falls, Rhode Island, is remarkable on several levels. And one of them is that there were a lot of teachers who were laid off who not only had a history of loyalty to the school and the community, but who had years of positive appraisals or performance reviews.

No one can argue that an organization, be it a school or a business, should have a fair and effective means of determining whether or not employees are working to the best of their ability and serving as a valuable resource. A strong employee evaluation process provides management with an opportunity to provide positive feedback and point out ways in which employee performance may need to be strengthened. It is a time when organizational and employee goals can be reviewed and aligned and, if relevant, obstacles to optimal performance identified and remedied. Through continuous refinement, the performance review process can add power to organizational operations.

But what happens when performance reviews are just an empty and meaningless management tactic that really has no operational value or legitimacy? That appears to have been the case in Central Falls. I recently had the opportunity to speak with some of the current and future staff members at Central Falls High School and, unsurprisingly, they were unhappy with what had transpired. But the only complaint that was heard the most was related to the apparent lack of weight given to performance evaluations. How can it be, they rightly ask, that teachers who had demonstrated their merit through a negotiated performance review process did not have that factor in their decision to fire? Apparently, all the effort put in by the administrators in the evaluation of the personnel was in vain, since their work did not influence when it came to a mass dismissal.

So why did the school district bother with performance reviews? One of the general purposes for which they occur is to identify the training needs of employees. Given that this school had a history of low-achieving students, it seems reasonable to assume that staff training needed to better focus on improving student achievement. One wonders to what extent this happened. Is it reasonable to assume that all teachers were so incompetent that they were unable to address the serious educational needs of an admittedly difficult school population? I think it was easier to fire everyone than to try to create an effective training program.

Another important function of performance reviews is to diagnose weaknesses to better address organizational inefficiencies. When an organization deteriorates to the point where its shortcomings are overwhelming, the question arises as to whether the workforce or the leadership is to blame. It’s hard to see how well this school was run. Education is difficult, but it is not particle physics. A more strategic attempt to use performance reviews as part of a plan to better identify and mitigate organizational imperfections might have been a more humane and intelligent approach to strengthening the school.

Perhaps the most important reason for having performance reviews is that they provide opportunities for employees and management to have frank and solution-oriented discussions of workplace issues. People don’t go into teaching for the money and prestige, but to try to make a difference in their communities and in the lives of young people. It’s one of those jobs that combines art, science, and passion to produce competence and efficiency… not unlike many jobs out there. Members of an organization must be able to collaborate powerfully in quality decision making and problem solving. Institutionalizing the means for this to happen becomes very necessary, particularly for an organization in crisis.

Can you imagine the lack of cooperation and trust between management and the base that results in the dismissal of all employees? This is a case study of lack of organizational development.