The Learning Network Blog: Student Opinion | Should Students Be Able to Grade Their Teachers?

On Wednesday students in Chicago public schools returned to classes after missing more than a week of school because their teachers were on strike. One of the questions at the heart of the strike was: how should teachers be evaluated?

While education leaders in Chicago were not seriously talking about having students evaluate their teachers, some education reformers are. The idea is nothing new in colleges, where students frequently evaluate their professors. So, do you think middle and high school students should be able to grade their teachers?

Room for Debate recently asked this same question about college students in the piece, "Professors and the Students Who Grade Them." And Motoko Rich highlighted the importance of the issue of teacher evaluations in the article "National Schools Debate Is on Display in Chicago":

One of the main sticking points in the negotiations here between the teachers union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel is a new teacher evaluation system that gives significant and increasing weight to student performance on standardized tests. Personnel decisions would be based on those evaluations.
Over the last few years, a majority of states have adopted similar systems, spurred by the desire to qualify for the Obama administration's Race to the Top education grants. The Education Commission of the States says that 30 states require that evaluations include evidence of student achievement on tests, and at least 13, and the District of Columbia, use achievement measured by test scores for half or more of a teacher's rating.
Proponents say these measures are needed to improve teaching in a country where 33 percent of fourth graders are not reading at grade level and about one-quarter of public high school students do not graduate on time, if at all. They say the new rating systems will help districts identify the best and worst teachers.
These efforts are stirring skepticism and anger among teachers, some of whom express a sense that those behind the new evaluations know little about what it is like to be in a classroom. Others fear that heavy reliance on scores will turn schools into test-taking factories.

Students

Do you feel students should be able to grade their teachers? Do you think student evaluations should be used by principals and district administrators, along with other data such as principal observations and test scores, to make decisions about teacher salary and job tenure?
Do you think students know what good teaching looks like? Do you think students can tell the difference between a highly effective teacher and a struggling teacher?
Do you think students can be fair in grading their teachers? Or, will they be overly generous to easy teachers and overly critical of hard teachers?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

Teachers: We ask a new Student Opinion question each weekday, and leave most open to comment indefinitely. Here is a list of the 163 questions we asked during the 2011-12 school year.