Comments on: Pedagogical Improvement

By: Tina K.

Tina K. — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:32:53 +0000

Parent input in the elementary survey could replace that of young students. Teaching staff would also be very beneficial in survey data. If done professionally a survey could be a worthwhile tool for the teacher involved but also for the administrator and school system. Not as a negative entity but as a building up and reaffirming of a pedagogaical process.

By: Jon Becker

Jon Becker — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:56:33 +0000

Thanks, Ed, for that information. I’d never really considered the history of the system. I do, however, regularly think about the politics of it. At Hofstra, faculty were part of a collective bargaining unit. So, the CTRs were very much a negotiated instrument and process. There are no unions here in VA though. I do imagine, then, that teacher unions would be very much part of any student-teacher evaluation process.

It’ll be interesting, as it always is in D.C., to see how Rhee does as Supt.

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:59:30 +0000

Jon, as a student, I ran the Faculty/Course Evaluation system at Carnegie-Mellon. I got the job as a service project for Alpha Phi Omega, the national service fraternity, and passed it on as a university run system. It has been interesting to me to note the changes from the system I inherited to the one (now rebranded) today. Then it was voluntary and for students’ use; now its part of the evaluation/promotion/teaching quality improvement process.

Yet, a professor at the University of Oklahoma informs me that even today, they have no such system there!

In thinking about this applied to k12, I’m recalling that normally, instructors did not see the raw data. They were to place them unseen in the envelope, and return them. We would summarize comments for publication, but generally not provide all the gory details.

And, perhaps in K12, parents should fill them out?

Just got done listening to a press conference from Michelle Rhee, where she again describes her non-stop efforts to hear what students, parents, and teachers in her 50,000 student charge have to say. Customer feedback–What a concept!

By: Phil

Phil — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:55:28 +0000

@ Kate,

I worked in a district where everyone had to do this, K-12, and it was included in the teacher’s evaluative instrument. Obviously the instruments varied along with the questions depending upon the level. We staffed this with people for each level who would compile the data and send the reports to the teachers and the administrators. In addition we sent surveys to random parents to assess how they felt about their child’s teachers(and administrators). We based it on the idea you need 360 degree feedback to determine how you are REALLY doing the job. For the most part it told us the things we already knew from direct observation. Effective teachers are evaluated higher by their students, unless it is a PE teacher and then everyone hates them for some reason.

We stopped the program after three years due to monetary, teacher associations and administrative concerns. Our really excellent teachers would obsess over the one negative comment and just not be able to move on and realize you cannot please everyone. The one consistent item was how valuable everyone found the feedback regardless of the grade level of the student. The customers always know the answer the only question was did we have the courage to ask.

By: Kate Olson

Kate Olson — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 03:07:11 +0000

This is an interesting topic! I loved getting to do professor evaluations at the end of semesters in college because I felt like I was making a difference and actually making the university better for future students. I was honest and constructive. This is where things get a bit trickier in the P-12 world – can feedback be taken as seriously from younger students? I’m NOT saying I don’t respect the opinion of young students, because I do – I’ve had students do evaluations in every class I taught and had students do ongoing reflections on the overall class experience on our class blog this past year.

However, I think that anonymous feedback in the younger grade levels might not be as useful as in the university setting. I hate how this sounds, because I KNOW there are a lot of great kids out there, but I do think that university students are more apt to take the evaluations seriously.

Am I wrong on this? Completely open to debate and would love to hear numbers telling me I’m TOTALLY off base!