MAMAY P's Pinoy Halu-Halo: Alignment of Assessment

Monday, September 23, 2013

To Judge and be Misjudged

As Judge

In some point in time, we have the opportunity to judge the knowledge, skills and performance of others. It could be in the classroom, in a contest, in an office or in any ordinary place and event where our so called “expert and objective” assessment comes to a test.

Like everyone, I also have the opportunity to evaluate other’s performance. At present, it is our new assistant accountant that our company hired four months back. My boss readily was impressed by this Pakistani who has many years of experience in a relatively big corporation here in the Middle East. However, I have already some bias towards this new employee because I know for years how his “kabayans” are working. And I was right.

Coming from big organization, he is poor in multi-tasking. Being paid in fixed salary, he is off when the clock ticks 6 PM, always ahead of me, although he has some delay and pending works. He keeps on putting off things to do until the last moment. He is keen on long conversations with fellow workers. Not bad if he continues working. The only positive about him is that his desk is always clean and tidy, not like mine, which is full of folders, papers, files, etc.

At any rate, he passed the probationary period. His performance was put to the test when I went on a one-month leave. When I returned, the invoices and transactions that I left are not yet photocopied and filed. Our workers complained of late salary. My boss was furious about his performance. He did not learn what I taught him to learn. He is still following his old strategies of doing things although I told him several times that they were not working. He just ignored things that need to be followed up.

Because of his performance, my boss issued him a warning letter. He should improve or face the ax. The response was abrupt. He was so proud that he immediately wrote a resignation letter today. He even gave it direct to our boss bypassing me who is his supervisor. Before going home, he tried to give me his room and cabinet keys, which I refused. I told him that he needs to finish all his pending works until such time that we let him go.

At this time, I can say that I was very fair to him since the beginning. I always gave him some advice that he did not bother to follow. He kept on doing his own old ways. It will not matter though if these strategies were working. But they did not. Well, let us wait for what happens next.

Adjudged and Misjudged

Up to this day, I can still remember the day when I was assessed together with my other classmates for the honor rolls for our high school graduation. Since only our parents and teachers from first year to fourth year attended the deliberation, I was shocked and disappointed about the result. I did not get the salutatorian that I was wishing for and I was downgraded to be the first honorable mention. I felt betrayed and cheated. This was a very honest wish because I was the first honor during my freshman year, second honor during my sophomore and junior year, and I could say, second honor in our senior year. What happened?

Well, the culprit was the measurement used by the school following the Department of Education and Sports’ criteria – 6 points for academic, 3 points for conduct and 1 point for extra-curricular activities. I was slipped down because of the conduct points. No, it was not because I was a renegade student but because of the composition of the voting teachers. Most of them are women and they will surely choose female students. Most of my male teachers were not there to vote for us males. I can say now that the assessment used was poorly aligned or utterly misaligned considering that character should never get that high point in the assessment simply because it was very subjective. Also, our final grades already contained points for moral values.