Why Not Teacher Evaluations by Students?

[Addison]

47. Well said

But your arguments rely on a lot of assumptions and, respectfully, I believe you're demonstrating the typical lack of imagination and self-analysis that's all too common in modern education.

"since they are anonymous, there is arguably no way at all to determine their quality"

If the evaluations help the teacher improve his or her teaching, then they are high quality evaluations, no? But this of course depends on how you define such improvement, and whether the teacher is willing to try to improve, or believes it is even possible. Many teachers assume their correctness on all educational decisions. They are the "teacher", after all.

"The more challenging a class is, the more likely it is to receive poor student evaluations."

Again, the subjective nature, and conflicting opinions about what might constitute "challenging." Many young people enjoy having their mental processes challenged. They are generally more open-minded than adults. Nevertheless, like adults, they do not enjoy being "challenged" by excessive workloads, especially if the work is perceived as unnecessary busywork.

"students are uniquely NOT qualified to evaluate their professors, both because they tend to evaluate from an emotional perspective rather than a rational or informed one"

First off, it's painful to hear this common argument against listening to students' opinions, because of the inherent hypocrisy of believing that on one hand young people are capable of mastering such incredibly sophisticated skills as reading Shakespeare or doing calculus, but incapable of reflecting on such skills objectively. Further, can't the same be said for teacher's grading practices? One wonders what differences we might find in the grades of students who are anonymously graded, particularly in subjects which require subjective evaluations.

"the merit and utility of ANY class is often not apparent to students until years later"

This assumes that most professionals, upon looking back at their classes, agree that the classes properly prepared them for their career. A huge assumption, which I think is not always borne out by the facts. Besides, shouldn't the utility of a class be made obvious to the student, if it can be? If the utility cannot be made obvious, that calls into question whether such utility exists and/or whether the teacher adequately understands the material. Evaluations may, perhaps, ferret this out.

"In education, the "product" we provide is opportunity to learn in a structured environment."

Every waking moment of a person's life is an opportunity to learn. A person may choose to learn in the structured environment of school, or, as is the case with most children, be compelled to learn in such an environment by force of law, but what they actually learn is not necessarily what their teachers think they are learning, or think that they should learn.

And of course the biggest assumption that we often make, either when discussing teacher evaluations or grading methodology -- or even the very idea of grading itself -- is that our system of categorization, the questions we ask and the criteria we value, is a true and accurate method of determining a particular question; i.e., is the professor good at teaching this subject, or is the student good at learning it.

As the old saw goes, ask the wrong question and it won't matter what answer you get.