Rate Your Teacher! It's All The Rage
Found this site through Mamacita and then again through Education Wonks.
I'm going to go against the general consensus and say that, most of the time, kids do know what they're talking about. They do not only give good ratings to those teachers that give them all As and no homework. Okay, some of them do, but you need to read between the lines. I have checked LilProgrammer's middle school teachers (ChinchillaBoy is starting this school in the fall) and most of the ratings and comments are right on. I was laughing out loud at what the students had to say about some of the teachers... but I am not naming any names.
And they definitely recognize the good ones, even if they are strict and their course is difficult. To sum it up, all LilProgrammer's teachers have the same average ratings that I would give them myself.
Then again, I am but a lowly parent!
I am not surprised. In my late teens and early 20's, I worked at a math camp for gifted teenage kids. The kids gave us all nicknames. What amazed me was how each nickname precisely conveyed the essence of the person. How did they do that? (Of course, it's easy for me to say... I didn't end up with a nickname like Hunchback or Mop!)
A fellow parent warned me, though, about one thing. Sometimes a hugely unpopular teacher will log in and leave positive feedback for himself or herself under the guise of an anonymous student. At least, that's what my friend suspects. I have seen a few suspicious ones myself. If a person has thirty negatives and one positive, you can't help but wonder, especially if this person's only positive feedback manages to contain trash about his or her fellow teachers. Big red flag. ChinchillaBoy, you've been warned.
The only thing about the site that left me wondering was that the teachers get rated on the "Easiness" of their class. WTF? Wouldn't Barney the dinosaur receive the highest rating in this category? Isn't school, like, supposed to be difficult? This way we can tell we're learning something, you know?
Other than that, nice site. Keep up the good work!
I'm going to go against the general consensus and say that, most of the time, kids do know what they're talking about. They do not only give good ratings to those teachers that give them all As and no homework. Okay, some of them do, but you need to read between the lines. I have checked LilProgrammer's middle school teachers (ChinchillaBoy is starting this school in the fall) and most of the ratings and comments are right on. I was laughing out loud at what the students had to say about some of the teachers... but I am not naming any names.
And they definitely recognize the good ones, even if they are strict and their course is difficult. To sum it up, all LilProgrammer's teachers have the same average ratings that I would give them myself.
Then again, I am but a lowly parent!
I am not surprised. In my late teens and early 20's, I worked at a math camp for gifted teenage kids. The kids gave us all nicknames. What amazed me was how each nickname precisely conveyed the essence of the person. How did they do that? (Of course, it's easy for me to say... I didn't end up with a nickname like Hunchback or Mop!)
A fellow parent warned me, though, about one thing. Sometimes a hugely unpopular teacher will log in and leave positive feedback for himself or herself under the guise of an anonymous student. At least, that's what my friend suspects. I have seen a few suspicious ones myself. If a person has thirty negatives and one positive, you can't help but wonder, especially if this person's only positive feedback manages to contain trash about his or her fellow teachers. Big red flag. ChinchillaBoy, you've been warned.
The only thing about the site that left me wondering was that the teachers get rated on the "Easiness" of their class. WTF? Wouldn't Barney the dinosaur receive the highest rating in this category? Isn't school, like, supposed to be difficult? This way we can tell we're learning something, you know?
Other than that, nice site. Keep up the good work!
