Assembly Needs to Hammer Out Fair, Bipartisan Standards

The decision by the nation's largest group of teachers to ``unconditionally'' accept a government-proposed performance evaluation plan was somewhat unexpected but generally right.

So far, the Korean Federation of Teachers Associations (KFTA), which comprises 45 percent of all elementary and secondary schoolteachers as its members, has agreed to the evaluation system ``in principle,'' but attached the precondition of the improvement of the educational environment ― such as average number of students per teacher ― to advanced countries' levels.

The nation's educational climate hasn't changed drastically in recent months, so why the seemingly abrupt about-face ― or unconditional surrender? First of all, the federation could no longer defy the demands of ``consumers'' ― up to 80 percent of parents, which drove 60 percent of teachers themselves to agree to the system to evaluate their own performances. Equally irresistible is a global trend toward this direction.

Most important, however, was the governing camp's promise not to link the evaluation results to personnel management, including promotion, for the time being. The governing Grand National Party was right to delay its automatic linkage until the atmosphere is ripe.

Now the ball is in the court of the other major organization of teachers, the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union (KTU), which has made clear its opposition to the evaluation system, saying it could overlap with the existing ``efficiency rating system,'' placing teachers under dual appraisals.

There is sufficient truth in the argument of the more progressive KTU, which represents 15 percent of teachers, especially under the Korean educational environment, in which some greedy, wayward school founders and boards of directors are running their institutions like for-profit organizations, while allowing little say for teachers and students.

Still, it is time for the KTU to discontinue what is viewed by many as ``opposition without alternatives'' and positively respond to the global and domestic trends by presenting its own principles and standards for the successful implementation of the evaluation system. After all, upgrading teachers' expertise and enhancing educational quality should be the backbone of normalizing the public education system, which the unionized teachers have so tenaciously advocated as a means of reducing far too expensive private tutoring expenses for Korean parents.

Given the importance education takes in this country of high social mobility, it would be good for the National Assembly ― not just the governing party but opposition group ― to pool their wisdom to work out fair, nonpartisan standards to evaluate teacher performances as well as rules preventing school boards and principals from abusing it as a way of discriminating or even driving out teachers critical to their policies.

It doesn't augur well in this regard that the head of the conservative KFTA, when he announced the acceptance of the plan without conditions, said, ``We don't want to work with pro-North Korean, leftist teachers.'' It's true the KTU has been politicized, but its contribution to normalizing the nation's education marred by limitless competition and egregious inequality should not be denied.

We hope the politicians and politicized educators will free the proposed system from politics and jointly prepare for its implementation only for the sake of enhancing public education.