Merit-Based Staffing and Accountability for Educators

Ensuring competence in government has never been easy. However, for decades at the federal level, getting certain jobs required passing a rigorous civil service examination. The tests raised the bar and reputation of these positions, but were eliminated in the 1970s, following radical court rulings based on disparate impact theories, ushering in an anti-merit civil service movement. Since then, government has grown far larger and less efficient, effective, and accountable.

Today, government positions should select for meritorious problem solvers, not prioritize the temperament to tolerate bureaucracy and incompetence. College degrees, once a gold standard for selecting the best and brightest, are today less correlated with specific aptitudes and raw ability than in past generations, and there is a growing bipartisan consensus around removing college degree requirements in hiring. These developments, combined with recent Supreme Court rulings that limit hiring practices tied to superficial characteristics like race, mean the tide may be turning.

The status quo threatens our civilization with incompetence and waste at every level, and America is crying out for leaders who will fix this mess. That is why it is imperative that we develop best practices to assess and reward talent, iterate and improve continuously, and stand up to reflexive bureaucratic resistance to meaningful and measurable accountability. Louisiana can set an example for other states and the federal government by staffing its state government based on merit via tests and other objective measures of competency, terminating perennially poor performers, and leveraging available incentives to improve performance.