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Comment by jakejake | Hacker News Reader

Some kids would be excellent at grading teachers. Unfortunately some would just have a grudge, or just have a power trip and try to sabotage teachers. I think on average they would be a good reflection of how well-liked the teacher is, but maybe not how effective they were at teaching.

For example the tough math teacher would get a bad evaluation, but the cream-puff teacher who never assigned homework and gave everyone A's would get a good evaluation.

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For example the tough math teacher would get a bad evaluation, but the cream-puff teacher who never assigned homework and gave everyone A's would get a good evaluation.

I always hear this objection, and it's usually brought up to discourage even experimental data gathering. I don't buy it at all, and I think it says more about the objectors' mentality than about the students'.

It's not a crazy objection; in other environments (for instance, inside corporations), peer and customer review regimes do foster CYA cultures. Also: the best teachers tend not to be the friendliest or easiest, and the issue is not just "will those teachers get bad performance reviews", but rather "will the act of measuring disrupt the behavior we're trying to measure?"

In many other situations that foster CYA cultures, the people doing the evaluating have as much to lose (might lose my job, lose a bonus, etc).

Student/teacher situations are somewhat unique in that students don't choose to be there, and will usually be gone in 1 year, and definitely in a few years. Students have far less to lose in this situation. That may make some of the be more harsh, but it likely (based on the article) will just make more of them honest.

I can't be honest with my boss because he might make life a living hell or fire me. I can certainly be honest with a teacher in a school who I'll never see again in my life.

Teachers can have a very big impact on someone's life. "Oh I see you want to go to this college, wouldn't it be an awful shame if that B turned into a C...."

the evaluations wouldn't be done until after the class is over, from how I read it.

The story addressed this at length. Actually, the student evaluations were an excellent predictor of test score gains.

The article discusses this issue extensively; I already quoted one part here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4560031 .

Here's just an example of what high school students do for fun when the "popular kids" band together http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120924/METRO/209240341

This is simply not true; it seems like you didn't read the article.

I read the article. You didn't go to my high school. Once the students were to get wise that the tests could get a teacher fired things would get ugly.

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