Why Not Teacher Evaluations by Students?

[Addison]

By Nat Hentoff
This article appeared on Cato.org on April 17, 2013.

As clashes continue between teachers’ unions and local and state legislatures concerning evaluations of teachers to determine if they are to stay employed, I don’t hear either side reacting to what students feel about how they are being taught. This includes the students themselves.

Such evaluations could and should ask students what they think being in school is going to mean for their futures. Teachers have their missions. But what are these students’ missions beyond college degrees?

Accordingly, to get teacher evaluations, students ought to reveal more about their own real-life, real-time selves in a preparatory dialogue with the people recording their judgments. These people should ask the students such questions as:

What do you most want to learn about, and why?
Have any of your teachers gotten you interested, even excited about subjects or issues you hadn’t previously thought about? If any did, how did they do that?
How well do your teachers know each of you outside of class?
What do you care about and do outside of this school?
What was your life like before you ever came to school?

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-not-teacher-evaluations-students