students grading teachers (man bites dog)
This morning I found this article in my reader: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/why-kids-should-grade-teachers/309088/3/?single_page=true I agree with the article. I have publicly espoused this view for many years. I said as much more than 20 years ago, almost 25 now, when I interviewed for the NC Teaching Fellows Scholarship as a young and naive high school senior. If you want to know what's happening in a classroom, ask the students. They know. Students are captive audiences day in and day out. They know the inner workings of a school or a classroom intimately. We should ask for, and value, their feedback. We haven't quite hit on a good way to evaluate teachers. States want to use test scores to say how effective teachers are. This is a cheap way to evaluate teachers which is why state legislatures often like this method. However, a test score will never show how a teacher changes a student's life. A test score will never show that a te