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This week, our school is conducting a pilot survey of the students in each class, asking how they "feel" in their individual teacher's classes. Next year, this survey becomes a part of each teacher's overall evaluation. I'm not really sure what I think of this. I'd like to think I'm smart and aware of enough to realize that my hardest teachers in HS - the ones that wouldn't cut me any slack, wouldn't allow me to abandon my own personal responsibility to my learning - were my best teachers. I know this now. But how many of your average and below average students currently understand this? How many of yhe brightest know this? How many of these that are failing my chemistry course - due to a complete lack of effort to do homework, take notes, study for tests - will give me a wonderful eval? How many will blame me for their own shortcomings?
I have AP students that will do this (and have done this) because they aren't getting the grades that they've been used to. Some of these students have coasted through their general classes with minimal effort, only to confront a college-level course and not know how to respond. They believe that they should be getting the same grades from the same minimal effort and are reluctant to change their study habits (why should they, since they've had straight A's until now?) And some lay the blame on anyone other than themselves.
OTOH, I will have some students that will - and have in the past - sing my praises, because they understand what good teaching is supposed to be (pardon my lack of humility ). So maybe it will be a wash.
What do you think of this new addition to our scored evalution? It's only supposed to be a small part, and I'm not really worried about it, but I think it continues to show a trend that the powers-that-be have no clue of the realities of the classroom.
I would be in the same boat as you. I teach honors algebra at the middle school level and every year I have incredulous students who cannot believe their grade has gone down in math. The problem is that the curriculum does not change terribly much from 5th to 6th grade and hardly at all between 6th and 7th. Then they get to my class where there are new concepts or old concepts wrapped in a new dress. Now they must actually pay attention, listen and do homework every night in order to understand the concepts.
Imagine...10 year olds providing feedback for your performance review....
I pity the teacher that has "behavior challenged" students who have been disciplined because those students are going to be getting what they think is their "sweet revenge".
This is the equivalence to having the prison inmates grade the guards and having this affect the guards' job performance. For every inmate with an objective opinion there will be another out to "get even".
I think it has it's pros and cons. Professors already have to do it. Jobs already do it. I think in schools they should take the advice of the smart children. My son tells me about the children who are bad and the teachers don't do much. I also heard about his female teacher having a bad day and just screaming at her students. I agree with the young children taking revenge on the teacher. But the district should take in account of what was observed and in the child's records. But I do know in college it's anonymous.
NC calls it STANDARD 6. MI calls it DOMAIN 6 Parents get to evaluate teacher as well..;.
The best news is it OUT WEIGHS all the other 5 Standards.
I'd have an easier time accepting the evaluations of the parents, although how they would have a chance to evaluate me is another thing. 99% of their knowledge of me comes from their children. But parents, having developed some life experience and maturity, know what "good" teachers are. Or should know, because I think we've seen an upturn in the number of "helicopter parents" in recent years and how their bias can be detrimental.
As for outweighting the other 5 standards: is that a good thing? Since I don't know what they are, I can't tell if that's better for the teacher or not.
Student evals for a junior faculty member teaching undergraduates can be brutal in the sciences, especially intro classes Just about every student thinks that they are an 'A' student going into the course, and thus 90%+ are disappointed with their performance and many blame the prof.
The good news is that we get a chance to explain the evals and put them into context. A rating of 6.5/10 with a class GPA of 2.4 looks a lot better than a 7.0/10 with an inflated GPA of 3.8. Of course the context is necessary, but at least there are some attempts to filter out grade and personality based bias.
What is really bad is when upper level students turn on someone and give across the board bad evals despite all doing well in the course and rating other instructors well. This hasn't happened to me, but it can definitely blemish a reputation.
I agree with Chemistry_Guy about the college evals. We get a chance to explain students' ratings. Plus, the department chair knows which courses tend to get lower scores due to the nature of the course and take that into account. In addition, the questions themselves tend to be fairly objective (for examples, "did the instructor deviate from what was in the syllabus", "did the instructor show up on time", etc.) Of course some students will just mark all 1's across the board if they don't like the prof...
I really don't think this is a good idea at the k-12 level, mostly because I wouldn't trust the powers that be to be able to make a valid and reliable set of questions.
Imagine...10 year olds providing feedback for your performance review....
I pity the teacher that has "behavior challenged" students who have been disciplined because those students are going to be getting what they think is their "sweet revenge".
BTDT. The charter school I worked at did student evals as part of our PR. I had a group of girls who I'd had discipline problems with all year long just go to town on those evals. It was so bad that when I ran into one of them working at a super market, two years later, she appologized for what she had written. She said that all the kids were getting into being able to slam the teacher and she just went along with them even though she didn't think any of those things about me.
This is the next step though. First it was make the parents happy, now school will be about making the students happy. So we'll hand out A's like candy and never require anything of them. That's what I'd have to do to get positive evals out of many of my students who'd rather not take my class in the first place.
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). So maybe it will be a wash. 
