When Students Grade Teachers
When it comes to evaluations in education, usually the teacher evaluates the student. Although in certain college level courses, the weight is shifted to the students, allowing them to have the power to evaluate their own professors, possibly affecting their careers. It seems odd enough that a student should grade their teacher, but even stranger is that technically students have the ability to control their teachers’ positions, only by filling out a single form. Of course the forms may have excellent remarks from the students, but usually when students are given the chance to anonymously share their opinion, this does not always occur. In these situations, the teachers are put on the spot, being evaluated by their very own students, leading to various negatives which exemplify that student evaluations of teachers should not be a major consideration in the rehiring or promotion of a teacher.
Many may disagree in my opinion due to the fact that there is a large percentage of students who like their teachers and grades received, all being fair reasons to be opposed. Certain students may favor a professor and the class that they teach, causing them to positively evaluate them, which allows for the possibility of the professor be promoted. This clearly explains why these students see student evaluations of teachers as a good thing. Even with this being said, I find myself disagreeing in that student evaluations of teachers will only lead to negative events such as specific teachers
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who are undeserving of a promotion receiving one, as well as numerous judgments being made from one piece of paper.
Oftentimes students find themselves disliking their teacher or professor be...
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Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching says, “students get no guidance on how to critique teachers.” (). Therefore when the student has the power, various factors including disliking professors, expecting high grades, and the popularity contest aspect are all reasons why student evaluations of teachers have negative impacts. In order to prevent these evaluations from determining if one keeps their job, it is necessary to publicly reconsider their function. Student evaluations of teachers often draw out the negatives in professors and courses, occasionally spreading false words, clearly explaining that they should not be a major consideration in the rehiring or promotion of a teacher.
In 2010, Charlotte Danielson wrote an article, “Evaluations That Help Teachers”, for the magazine The Effective Educator. The purpose of this article was to explain how a teacher evaluation system, such as her own Framework for Teaching, should and can actually foster teacher learning rather than just measure teacher competence, which is what most other teacher evaluation systems do. This topic is especially critical to decision-making school leaders. Many of the popular teacher evaluation systems fail to help schools link teacher performance with meaningful opportunities for the teachers to reflect on and learn from in order to grow professionally. With the increased attention on the need for more rigorous student standards, this then is an enormous opportunity missed. Students can only achieve such rigorous expectations if their teachers can effectively teach them, and research has shown that teachers who are evaluated by systems that hold them to accountability and provide them for continuous support and growth will actually teach more effectively.
Some classes should not have grades, such as writing. If a teacher asks a student to write a paper about a highly debated topic, such as abortion, and the students opinion differed from the teachers. It is possible that the teachers
Staples wrote, “Professors at every level inflate to escape negative evaluations by students, whose opinions now figure in tenure and promotion decisions”. (935) to tell the truth, I disagree with Staples opinion. I ponder on if it really the students or is it the professor. If a couple of students leave a bad review that will not make the professor look bad if they are giving them the grades they deserve. Why are the students in charge of the professor’s job? That is a question no one can answer. There are several aspect to consider whether or not the professor could be doing the job for the money or have too much pride in letting others see them do bad. Those aspects should be taking into consideration when speaking about grade inflation. I feel as if Staples is putting more blame on the students and parents than the teachers and administrators. Even if colleges use Staples’ proposal colleges are still faced competition among online universities. Students who attend a college campus generally end up in debt causing more people to steer toward receiving their diplomas online. Therefore, grade inflation will continue to rise because of the fear among
A third and the most obvious way that educators characterize the needs and abilities of their students is with grades. Whether your in first grade and get U's or S's, or your in highschool and get A's, B's, C's, D's, or F's teachers are always judging students ability levels. Anoth...
The American educational system became a commercial product over the years. Advertising became a norm, and before enrolling in college, potential students will do some research in order to determine college ratings, and what other people think about a specific educational institution. Education costs money, and students want to make sure that their investments will be reasonable. Nevertheless, in the past years, students, besides doing research about a specific college, tend to do a research about the professors who teach certain courses. The reason is simple - to pick the best one from the offered choices. Based on the comments provided by others, students determine if professor would fulfill their expectations to succeed in that class. Ratings
The nature of the arguments offered against these dissenting voices are very troubling; so too their political effects. The arguments fall into two groups. First, professors are charged with showing no concern for the feeling of others: they lack taste and judgment; they are insensitive, self-indulgent and offend others at a time when emotions are raw. In being so inattentive to their students' emotional sensitivities, dissenting faculty violate the trust students place in them. Now is not the time for critique, but for emotional nurturing, reassurance and national solidarity.
One solution offered by Alfie Kohn, a well-renowned speaker on human behavior, education, and parenting, suggests that teachers would give parents written evaluations of how their child is performing and having frequent conferences available to talk about their child’s performance. Kohn believes that the most effective teachers do not rely solely on standardized tests. Great teachers are able to observe their students and are able to see without the use of exams how well their students understand the concepts being taught. In 1999, Phi Delta Kappa and Gallup poll surveyed the community. Individuals were asked to choose which of four approaches they felt would be the most precise evaluation of a student’s educational development. Using exam scores from standardized testing received the lowest percentage of 27%. Evaluating work that the students have done over a period of time received the highest number of votes at 33%, while the remainder of the votes were divided between letter grades and written evaluations from teachers after observing each student (Pollard, J, 1999).
They need to look and see if the assessment is covering the standards and objectives that are being covered in that content. Teachers also need to make sure that the assessments are fair to all students, where individually the student can perform to the best of their abilities. Teachers also need to make sure that their assessments are made with the intent of giving positive feedback to the students, not just grades. To determine what is not a good assessment, teachers need to look at the opposite of these things previously listed. If the assessment doesn’t correlate with the standards and objectives with this content, then it is not a good assessment. If the assessment isn’t fair to all students, then it is not a good assessment. Lastly, if the assessment is unable to give positive feedback to the students, then it is also not a good
As a student you are evaluated everyday, but have you ever desired to be the one doing the grading? This is a thought provoking idea. Teachers grade students on almost everything these days; including participation and behavior. So wouldn’t it be nice to return the favor? Although it may sound like a great idea, it could also be a very bad one. If students were able to grade their teachers it could provide proper and thorough evaluation; help teachers to improve on what they may be lacking, and help parents understand what is going on in the classroom; but at the same time it could prove to be harmful to the student and a good teacher’s career if not implemented correctly. This is why it’s important to recognize the possible positive impacts, the negative impacts, and the current programs that are in place, and their impacts.
The state’s new evaluation system was in response to administrators who produced, “superficial and capricious teacher evaluation systems that often don't even directly address the quality of instruction, much less measure students' learning” (Toch, 2008). Too often, the “good-ol-boy” attitude would insure mediocre educators would remain employed. Realizing this was often more the rule then the exception, the governor created educational mandates to focus, “on supporting and training effective teachers to drive student achievement” (Marzano Center, 2013). Initially, they expected the school districts and the teachers would have issues and experience growing pains, but in the end the goal was, “to improve teacher performance, year by year, with a corresponding rise in student achievement” (Marzano Center, 2013).
In order to understand how teacher evaluations can be positive, we need to look at their purpose and how districts do teachers evaluations. According to different articles written by Education Leadership, reformers many times neglect teacher evaluations as a tool to improve student learning, this is because most schools lack credible systems of measuring the quality of
In spite of the importance of assessment in education, few teachers receive proper training on how to design or analyze assessments. Due to this, when teachers are not provided with suitable assessments from their textbooks or instructional resources, teachers construct their own in an unsystematic manner. They create questions and essay prompts comparable to the ones that their teachers used, and they treat them as evaluations to administer when instructional activities are completed predominantly for allocating students' grades. In order to use assessments to improve instruction and student learning, teachers need to change their approach to assessments by making sure that they create sound assessments. To ensure that their assessments are sound they need include five basic indicators that can be used as steps to follow when creating assessments. The first of these indicators and the first step a teacher must take when creating a sound assessme...
Assessment is a tool used in the classroom every day. It is used to measure a student’s mastery of a skill or knowledge of a given subject. It is also what demonstrates to the teacher what the students have learned. Educators use that information to determine if they need to re-teach to a specific student, group, or the entire class. They can also use that information to determine the rate of their teaching. Assessments are important because, as teachers, we need to know what difficulties our students have and what needs to be refined for them. While I do believe in assessment and feel that it is one of the key components of teaching, I am more concerned with a child’s process of learning rather than the overall product that comes from it. This is where grades come in for me. Grades determine the students’ level of mastery on a subject, nothing more. Grades should not be the exclusive indicators that a student has learned the information that is presented to them. It is the things a student learns along the way that truly matter and sometimes cannot be measured.
supervisors to engage in the illegal practice of passing a person over for promotion due to
The importance of constructive feedback allows for many positive opportunities. One important element is that feedback provides a foundation for positive student and teacher relationships. By providing appropriate feedback, the students understand the teacher is genuinely concerned about them and their education. This component also enhances a student’s self-efficacy and provides an avenue for motivation.