Why Not Teacher Evaluations by Students?

[Squinch]

50. I am not afraid of anything. But here are some realities:

We are talking about the evaluation system. The evaluation system is the tool that is used to fire teachers.

Nothing is wrong with the questions other than the fact that they don't actually evaluate learning. Some of them are clearly written by someone who is ignorant of the time and curriculum demands that teachers face today. The others are benign and are asked by most teachers of the children anyway.

The problem arises when you institutionalize a teacher evaluation based on children's ratings. The result would be a rating for teachers that is based on what is popular among children, and that tells nothing about how much learning actually goes on in a given teacher's classroom.

And, again, children should not bear the responsibility of steering their education, and should not have control over the people charged with the children's well being. They can't do that effectively because they don't know enough about what they need to know and what they don't know. That is why children have teachers.