Letters.

Grade Inflation

The letter to the editor in the September edition, from David Grant, prompted me to look up your "Tilting at Windmills" mention of federal government "deadwood" in the July/August issue. (By the way, this is the first time I've checked out the Monthly's web site--it's very good). I went looking in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) web site for the study you cited. Before finding it, I came across "percentage distributions of performance ratings" of federal employees, for fiscal years 1991-96. The ratings are disturbing.

The 1996 numbers showed that fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent of federal employees had "unacceptable" performance--and in three of the four categories listed, there were no "unacceptable" performers. The next rank up, "minimally successful," had fewer than three-tenths of 1 percent of all employees (two of the four categories had one-tenth of 1 percent, and the other two had three-tenths of 1 percent). In other words, only a fraction of 1 percent of federal employees were less than "fully successful" in job performance. Obviously, in any large group of human beings there are going to be more under-performers than these numbers show. And juxtaposed with the OPM study you cited, the ratings show that supervisors (or whoever does the ratings) are giving many non-performers a free pass.

In all four employee groupings, more than three-quarters of all employees were rated in the top two to five rating categories. In the supervisors and management officials category, fully 88 percent of employees were rated "outstanding" or "exceeds fully successful." In other words, those who presumably are most likely to give ratings are mostly likely to get high ratings.

ROBERT WARD THE PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE OF NEW YORK STATE, INC. Albany, N. Y. Bean Time

I greatly appreciate Heather Bourbeau's favorable review of my book, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World (October 1999). But I am mystified and distressed that she wrote: "He [Pendergrast] credits coffee with the end of slavery in Brazil." On the contrary, I made it clear that Brazil maintained slavery until 1888, longer than any other country in the Western Hemisphere, precisely because of coffee. Bourbeau also characterized my coverage of Starbucks as "biased and bemused" While I may have been "bemused," I took great pains to be even-handed and I gave Starbucks full credit for its achievements while also quoting its critics.

MARK...