Evaluating Evaluations

December 14, 2009

Kathy O'Neil, asst. opinions editor  

Filed under Opinions

Most students love evaluation days. When else do they get to rant about their teachers to someone who has the power to do something about it? There is great satisfaction in marking “seldom” when asked if the teacher demonstrates competence in those classes where you think that the teacher is not up to par. In fact, it’s commendable that we have these evaluations—many schools don’t and it gives our administration the opportunity to help problem teachers. However, these opportunities to rant could do with a bit of improvement.

Firstly, the forms are way too generic. How do you answer, “Are you encouraged to think critically?” in a Piano class? Or in a math class how much can a math teacher vary teaching techniques? Cheating in a drawing and painting class would be a particularly interesting feat as well. Most of these questions seem to be tailored toward the English or Social Studies departments. It seems clear that much more helpful feedback would be received through forms that are tailored at least to the department if not to the class itself. For example, instead of asking about varying teaching techniques in math, you could ask if the teacher tries to teach in an interesting manner. Or in the arts, a question could be added asking if the students are encouraged to think creatively.

Questions should also take into account for the different levels of classes. In an AP or Honors class, it is expected that the work is challenging and covered quickly. Questions like “how challenging was the work in this class?” or “how quickly is the material covered?” may make a class look bad if most of the students answer honestly that it was challenging material that was covered quickly. It would be more appropriate to ask, “Was the speed/difficulty of this class appropriate for the course?” This would make it much more clear what students were trying to say through the evaluation.

Some of the questions are also too constrained in their meaning. For example, “Do you receive a calendar at the beginning of each unit?” is a valid question, but by now all teachers do. The question that should be asked is whether the calendar is satisfactory, useful, and whether the teacher sticks to it.

A number of the questions also seem to have no clear use. For example, what would be done if a few students reported that they knew of cheating going on in a class? This question is too vague—it gives no information as to who is doing it and only specifies whether it is on homework or on tests. A teacher would have no way of responding to this other than watching for cheating, which teachers do already. If the goal of this question is to see whether teachers are enforcing rules against cheating, that should be the question: “Are academic integrity rules enforced in the classroom?”

Also, whether or not the teacher expects that students come to class prepared does not seem to make sense. If a teacher lets a student go to their locker on occasion to get something they forgot, are they letting them get away with not coming to class prepared? In my mind that is just being reasonable, and if it becomes a problem with a certain student then that can be dealt with specifically. Since I think most students would not know how to differentiate between teachers who expect this from students or don’t, it doesn’t achieve any end to ask this question.

These questions often also have very limited options for the answers. “Almost always,” “sometimes,” and “seldom” are the choices for many of the questions, all of which have very related meanings. I often find myself having to pick between two of them when the teacher is right in the middle. Most teachers always hand out a calendar, so if there is one who occasionally doesn’t, I may end up putting the same answer since they “almost always” may do so. Feedback would be much clearer if more specific options were provided, like “always” and “never” at least.

Some of the inquiries and answers just seem downright odd. When asking about the relationship between the teacher and the class, the best that can be said about the teacher is that he or she is “relatively friendly.” What exactly is “relatively friendly?” I see no need for a weird answer like that—I certainly consider the relationships with a lot of my teachers as “friendly” plain and simple. When I first saw that question freshman year, I was rather perplexed, as that was the best option with “somewhat indifferent” and “rather unfriendly” coming afterwards. Yet again, most of my teachers placed in between the options or in a category the options ignored. More options like 1. friendly 2. respectful 3. average or 4. disrespectful would give much clearer feedback to the teachers and the administration as to what the atmosphere in the classroom was like.

Despite these problems, teacher evaluations are definitely an excellent part of Pres’s make-up that students appreciate. However, if the administration and teachers want clear feedback with which they can work to improve classroom situations, they should take another look at the questions they are asking to make sure that they get clear and useful responses.

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Tags: Presentation, Teacher evaluations