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Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

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Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#81

Post by briandear »

joe_the_user wrote: post #73
eagsalazar2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something to what you are saying but it is also true that many many aspiring teachers wash out because they can't even get their first job after getting their teaching degree. It _is_ a competitive market in many places but the market _isn't_ functioning as it should because of dysfunctional relationships with unions and tenure.

It _is_ a competitive market in many places but the market _isn't_ functioning as it should because of dysfunctional relationships with unions and tenure. Unions? Really? Not administrators and profit institutions cutting college teachers' salaries to the bone, creating a situation adjunct professors literally starve to death in the process. No, unions. And tenure is your other complaint? The job guarantee that no lo…

Are you talking universities or K12? Because everything the parent said is true in K12. Spend 10 minutes at a Jersey City School Board meeting and you’ll see just how aggressive the union is if you even hint at reform. Can’t speak to higher ed though, except tenure for classroom instructors is a real problem. Since they have absolutely zero incentive to be good teachers but instead only engaging in activities that bring in research money for their area of interest.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#82

Post by eagsalazar2 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #79
eagsalazar2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something to what you are saying but it is also true that many many aspiring teachers wash out because they can't even get their first job after getting their teaching degree. It _is_ a competitive market in many places but the market _isn't_ functioning as it should because of dysfunctional relationships with unions and tenure.

Not really. It’s a very cyclical market as cohorts of graduates coming out of school wax and wane due to birth rates and the economy. All government or teaching jobs are that way — their fiscal woes lag the economy and they tend to pick up better employees when companies blow up. Blaming unions like citing the boogeyman. It’s almost always the lazy answer that doesn’t pan out.

I didn't dismiss other variables so flippantly as you are doing and I never blamed unions, I said "dysfunctional relationship". I'm a big defender of unions actually but that doesn't mean they are perfect.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#83

Post by briandear »

shanghaiaway wrote: post #29
Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #6

We pushed very hard at my alma mater to publicize course/teacher evaluations. We eventually got the University to accept iff a minimum participation rate was met (on a per course basis-- so it wasn't all or nothing. We'd get a subset of the data when enough participation occurred. We considered this reasonable, since if very few students participate, the data isn't all that meaningful). Regarding professors wanting t…

Like with healthcare recipients, students don't necessarily know what they need and therefore aren't able to accurately rate providers.

When they are paying the bills, they have a right to providing feedback on the product they are receiving. Students go into deep debt to pay schools, they are the customers and their feedback ought to matter.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#84

Post by eagsalazar2 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #73
eagsalazar2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something to what you are saying but it is also true that many many aspiring teachers wash out because they can't even get their first job after getting their teaching degree. It _is_ a competitive market in many places but the market _isn't_ functioning as it should because of dysfunctional relationships with unions and tenure.

It _is_ a competitive market in many places but the market _isn't_ functioning as it should because of dysfunctional relationships with unions and tenure. Unions? Really? Not administrators and profit institutions cutting college teachers' salaries to the bone, creating a situation adjunct professors literally starve to death in the process. No, unions. And tenure is your other complaint? The job guarantee that no lo…

[flagged]

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#85

Post by shanghaiaway »

Bjartr wrote: post #45
shanghaiaway wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like with healthcare recipients, students don't necessarily know what they need and therefore aren't able to accurately rate providers.

Like all end user feedback, what they claim they need isn't always going to be what they actually need, but the pain points they reveal can inform where improvement is necessary and valuable.

Sure, but that feedback which is directed at someone who is also a private person does not need to be made public.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#86

Post by Overtonwindow »

Possible alternative method is to hire and train students to be observers, both covert and overt. Put them into classes as if they were students, and those students Would then Evaluate that professor. It could work especially cross colleges, where those students will never naturally take classes by that professor.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#88

Post by avani »

Student reviews are also ridiculously sexist in the average case. In a recent study, the students rated identical teachers differently enough by gender that actual teaching performance was lost in the noise: https://academic.oup.com/jeea/advance-article-abstract/doi/1...

Another pair of studies showed that identical courses where students thought instructors were male rated higher than those that had a female professor, and their qualitative answers were also very different: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/14/study-says-st...

I'm grateful to be a computer scientist, where the consolation prize for not getting tenure is a cushy industry job, but I feel deeply for my pre-tenure colleagues in the life sciences who have to work twice as hard for their evaluations while still maintaining their research and service requirements.

Re: Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers, It Hurts Students

#90

Post by bocklund »

Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #15
olliej wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America teachers get tenure so your feedback has no impact on them improving. Also if you look at literally any study of them TAs for harder courses get harsher ratings, they get harsher ratings from weaker students. I also spent a number of years as a TA I can say anecdotally that is my exact first hand experience - good reviews in easy courses like graphics, atrocious scores in design of concurrent systems. In f…

Very few professors are granted tenure, as was the case in the past. It's weakly non-zero: times have changed. There are far more adjunct professors today. Universities are more run like businesses than in decades past.

I don’t have data, but I think most tenure track professors get tenure (if not at their current university, than another).

Adjunct professors are not tenure track, so there is really no expectation that they would get tenure. Though I have seen the numbers that say the number of adjuncts is increasing.

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